What else could they have written? Could they have told of the painstaking plans that had gone so badly awry? Could they have told of the awful consequences of the blunder which had stopped the guns firing after the explosion at Beaumont Hamel? Could they have criticized the Staff for underestimating the enemy’s defences? Could they have dwelt on the supporting barrage of shells, so unalterable in its rigid timing that it went far ahead of the troops, lifting again and again, according to programme, until its shells were tumbling harmlessly miles behind the inviolable German line, leaving its own troops to the mercy of the enemy’s machine-guns and shellfire? Could they have been expected to explain that no one had been able to interrupt the programme, to bring the bombardment back, because no one had known what was happening? And were the Correspondents in a position to judge that no reliable news had come back from the fighting line because the painstakingly elaborate system of communications had completely broken down? How could they have arrived at the bitter truth that, despite the plethora of failsafes – of pigeons and wireless and runners and flags, of markers and flashes and lamps and telephones and aeroplanes – in places where no messages had been received it was because no single officer or even sergeant had survived the slaughter to send one?
It was not that GHQ had suppressed this information. The simple fact was that the Army itself did not know. It would be many hours yet before the situation was fully understood. It would take weeks and months of agonized analysis and reappraisal before the truth of what had gone wrong was fully understood and appreciated. And the truth was that the Staff had not trusted Kitchener’s Army. Leading it by the hand, it had left it so little room to manoeuvre that, in the end, it had been unable to manoeuvre at all.
Although the reports which were beginning to trickle back gradually from the front were becoming more and more disquieting there were at least some successes to report. It was natural that the GHQ Communiqués should dwell on them. It was in the front line that the troops were dwelling on the failure.
Sergeant Jim Myers, No. 22745, 25th Co., Machine Gun Corps, 31st Division
The biggest mistake that was made on manoeuvres and training was that we were never told what to do in case of failure. All that time we’d gone backwards and forwards, training, doing it over and over again like clockwork and then when we had to advance, when it came to the bit, we didn’t know what to do! Nothing seemed to be arranged in case of failure.
Corporal Harry Shaw, No. 12774, 9th Btn., Royal Welsh Fusiliers, 19th Western Division
Whatever was gained, it wasn’t worth the price that the men had paid to gain that advantage. It was no advantage to anybody. It was just sheer bloody murder. That’s the only words you can use for it.
Rifleman T. Cantlon, No. 33419, 21st Btn., King’s Royal Rifle Corps
They said to us, ‘You lot are moppers up, that’s what you’ve got to do, follow in after the first wave and mop up.’ But, they never told us what mopping up was, and we only had a vague idea. No training, as such, except that we were supposed to chuck bombs at these flags that were supposed to be dugouts. Well, when we got to the real thing and we were supposed to throw them down real dugouts full of Germans when we got into the trench, the first thing was that the bombs weren’t nearly powerful enough to do much damage. And the second thing was that they didn’t go right down anyway because the Germans built the steps down with a bend to them, so half the time when you chucked your bomb down, it didn’t go all the way down and explode at the bottom, it just went off, bang, against this bend in the wall. It maybe brought down a bit of dust, it maybe even blocked the entrance, if you were lucky, except that Jerry always had a back door to go out of, but, when you’re rushing along like that, you don’t go down to look and see, do you? You just chuck your bomb down, like you’ve been told. Well, half the time, when you moved on a bit, the Jerries would come rushing up at your back and get you from behind. That’s what was happening on the first day and it was happening all over the place in our sector. It must have been, because, when you got into the second trench, and you were bombing away there, you’d get shots coming at you from the way we’d come and you’d turn round and there would be old Jerry at your back potting away, and some of them going for the next lot of troops coming up to this trench that we were supposed to have cleared. We simply didn’t know what to do, and that’s the truth of it. But we soon learned!
Still in his shell-hole between the Leipzig Redoubt and Ovillers and between the first and second German lines, Ernest Deighton was in no state to analyse what had gone wrong. He only knew, between bouts of unconsciousness, that the sun riding high in the sky marked his second day lying out on the battlefield, that he was in pain and that rescue was a long time coming. He also noticed, without much interest, that one by one his companions had died during the night. For a long time it was mercifully quiet, then, alerted by some movement, a machine-gun started up and the bullets were zipping dangerously close to him. The shell-hole was too shallow for safety but there was no possibility of moving even if he had been able to summon up the strength. A dead comrade was lying just below the edge of the shell-hole. Inch by inch and painfully slowly, using his good shoulder and his uninjured hand, Ernie managed to push the body up above the rim. He was only able to heave up the legs and a part of the trunk; the arms and the head still hung down into the shell-hole. As the gun swung through its traverse, Deighton noticed, almost absently, that the bullets smacking into the body sounded exactly the same as if they were thudding into sandbags. It was all one to the poor chap now and a few more bullets would make no difference but all the same he wished, as he crouched beneath the body and drifted back into unconsciousness, that the dead boy’s upside-down contorted face was not suspended quite so near his own.
There were few church parades on the Somme that Sunday morning. Most padres had their hands full succouring the wounded as they were carried out of the line, lending a hand at aid posts or travelling along the still chaotic roads as their battalions were pushed forward, with all haste, to relieve the shattered troops in the line. Such public orisons as were addressed to the Almighty were spoken over the mass graves where, in communal funeral services, they were burying the bodies of severely wounded soldiers who had died at dressing stations. It was a dreary duty that would go on for days, for weeks and even months as the Army inched forward and the dead were gradually recovered from the captured ground. Already some padres, sickened and dispirited, were disinclined to comply with the clearly expressed wishes of the Commander-in-Chief, passed on to them, at his request, by the Deputy Chaplain General, Bishop Gwynne… that the Chaplains should preach to the troops about the objects of Great Britain in carrying on this war. We have no selfish motive, but are fighting for the good of humanity. It was Haig’s sincerely held belief that this was true and that the duty of the padres was to underline it constantly, to sustain the troops and bolster their morale just as, in the midst of his own difficulties and responsibilities, he himself was sustained and uplifted by the approval of Higher Authority, obligingly reaffirmed each Sunday in the sermons of Mr Duncan. This good man had no doubts about his mission and his duty and, that Sunday morning, he fulfilled both admirably and to the full satisfaction of the Commander-in-Chief. Early that morning he attended the simple Presbyterian service held in makeshift premises near his headquarters at Beauquesne. With the heavy responsibilities of the Commander-in-Chief at the forefront of his mind, Mr Duncan had chosen as his text: ‘Ye are fellow workers with God’.1
The service was necessarily brief because there was much to be done. As early as yesterday afternoon, when Sir Douglas Haig had driven after luncheon to Fourth Army Headquarters at Querrieu to confer with Sir Henry Rawlinson, plans had been hastily recast in the light of the first reports. Even by then, it had been obvious that the attack all along the 8th Corps Front and also at Gommecourt had failed completely, while firmer and more detailed reports had indicated, beyond doubt, that in front of Mametz and Montauban, it had suc
ceeded. It was clear that General Gough’s Cavalry, jingling in reserve and ready to dash through to Bapaume, would not be needed in the immediate future – nor would the two held-back divisions (the 12th and the 25th) be required to accompany it forward. Until the situation became clearer, as Sir Douglas Haig tentatively suggested to Sir Henry Rawlinson, courteously leaving him to make the decision, it seemed sensible to concentrate all efforts towards exploiting the gains in the south and, meanwhile, to hold the attack north of the Ancre. By seven o’clock that evening, it had been decided.
Extract from the daily diary of General Sir Douglas Haig
At 7 p.m., as the result of my talk, Sir H. Rawlinson telephones that he is putting the 8th and 10th Corps under Gough at 7 a.m. tomorrow. The 8th Corps seem to want looking after! Gough’s command will be the 5th Army.
General Gough’s command would therefore stretch from the Thiepval Ridge northwards to Serre. His most important task was to take Thiepval – and to take it at all costs. The Fourth Army, under Sir Henry Rawlinson, would be left free to concentrate on the rest of the line, to exploit the breakthrough on the right and push towards the Thiepval Ridge by its back door at Pozières. But they could not even begin this task, nor even move much further forward on the successful right flank, until they had driven the Germans out of Fricourt and la Boisselle.
Late in the afternoon GHQ received the gratifying tidings that the Germans had retired from the Fricourt Salient. Now, with all the force that they could muster, the troops must consolidate their ‘gains’ at la Boisselle, capture the village and renew the attack on its twin village of Ovillers across the valley.
At la Boisselle, practically all the force that the troops could muster was represented by some one hundred and fifty men in the small length of the trench they had captured between the big mine crater and the village, and by Major Acklom, Tom Easton, and a handful of others in the tunnel behind – so narrow that two men could only squeeze past each other with difficulty, so low that they could not stand upright and where their only link with the outside world was the single telephone line that Easton had managed to connect. It was the only means by which Brigadier-General Ternan could keep in touch with the sole officer of his entire Brigade who was still, to his knowledge, in the line. The Brigadier’s cheerful bellow at the other end of the wire, his encouragement to ‘hold on’, his reassurances that help was on the way and that fresh troops would soon relieve them, was some slight comfort in their dilemma.
Ternan was far from feeling as cheerful as he sounded, for the ranks of the dead and most of the wounded were still lying out where they had fallen yesterday morning. Behind them the front line was tenuously held by a company of Pioneers. They were practically all that was left of the Brigadier’s command.
The first priority if la Boisselle was to be taken was to get the survivors out, to get fresh troops in and to get them in fast. In all but name the 34th Division had ceased to exist.
Chapter 9
The theatre at Bavincourt some miles to the north of the battle was only a barn, but it was a pretty good one. While no one could pretend that it came up to the standard of the London Pavilion, the 37th Division had been in the area for almost nine months and in that time, even with a strenuous programme of normal duties of trench-digging and road-making, the Divisional Pioneer Battalion had had plenty of time to transform the building into a respectable facsimile of a real theatre for the benefit of the 37th Divisional Concert Party. There were curtains, there were footlights, there was a ticket-office and seating for up to three hundred on an assortment of pews and forms rescued from churches rather nearer the line which, having been ‘ventilated’ by German shells to an unhealthy degree, had been temporarily abandoned by their congregations. If the village of Bavincourt was not precisely the Shaftesbury Avenue of the Western Front, it was conveniently situated within a few kilometres’ walk of half a dozen villages occupied as rest-billets by troops out of the line. But, such was the popularity of ‘The Barn Owls’ that the troops would have walked twice as far to see them.
It was a tidy step from Humbercourt – a good eight kilometres – and among the men of the 13th Battalion, The Rifle Brigade who had marched there the day before, on feet softened by a ten-day tour in the trenches, there were many who were more than content to stroll down to the estaminet, make a tour of convenient farmhouses in search of eggs, or simply to ‘hang about’ – an inexpensive pastime made all the more attractive by the fact that they had not been paid. It had been a miserable day of parades, cleaning up and kit inspections. And it had rained. It was still raining in the evening when a dozen stalwarts set out to tramp the eight kilometres to Bavincourt to enjoy an evening at the theatre and to get together after the show with two members of the Battalion who were in the cast of the concert party. They spotted Bill Tylee and Telly Dillsen as soon as the curtain went up and the full company launched into the opening chorus:
We are the Barn Owl Boys,
We make a lot of noise,
We come here nightly,
We just can’t get to Blighty,
We are just divisional toys.
Don’t think that we’re just shirkers,
We fight like Leicesters or Gurkhas,
We’ve got our iron rations,
And all the latest fashions,
We dig like real good workers.
It was the prelude to a happy evening. For the Riflemen the highlight was a turn by Telly Dillsen who combined a splendid bass voice with a talent for lugubrious comic parody. Tonight he chose to render his own version of Sentry! What of the Night?
Sentry! What of the night?
The sentry’s answer I will not repeat,
Though short in words ‘twas with feeling replete.
It covered all he thought and more,
It covered all he’d thought before,
It covered all he might think yet
In years to come,
For he was wet and had no rum.
There was hardly a member of the audience, other than the Brass Hats in the front row, in whom these sentiments did not strike a sympathetic chord, and they raised the roof. Even Jack Cameron, flirtatiously representing a beautiful blonde, received no greater ovation although ‘she’ took half a dozen bows, eyelashes a-flutter, before the company joined hands for the closing chorus:
We hope you will excuse us,
If you didn’t like our show don’t abuse us,
For we tell you straight and true,
That like you we’re soldiers too,
We don’t get any suppers, not any more than you.
And why we’re not in the trenches just now,
Is because our Gallant Staff,
Have sent us here to try and make you laugh,
But one and all,
We are ready for the call,
To join our regiments.
There was time for a beer afterwards when Tylee and Dillsen had changed back into uniform, and many handshakes, back-slappings and backward shouts of ‘See you soon’, as the lads started back on the long tramp through the rain to Humbercourt. They were to see Tylee and Dillsen sooner than any of them expected and it was just as well that they were ‘one and all ready for the call to join our regiments’, because their orders were already on the way. The following morning they would be saying goodbye to the greasepaint, packing up their kit and making for Humbercourt themselves to rejoin the Battalion on the final stage of its journey to the Somme.
In all their sojourn in France, since they had arrived on the Mona’s Queen on 30 July almost a year before, and apart from a few jolting rail journeys in unsavoury cattle trucks, it was the first time that the Riflemen had not had to march. The buses arrived at ten o’clock in the evening of 5 July. There were twenty of them to transport the Battalion, and they had seen better days since they had trundled around the peacetime streets of London, shiny red and cheerfully noisy. They were still noisy, and here and there, where the drab khaki of their wartime paint was c
hipped, a glint of red still hinted of the days when they had plied along Oxford Street, travelling north to Kilburn, or honked through Piccadilly and south to Kensington. The windows were boarded up but, miraculously, on some the conductor’s bell was still functioning. And, as the boys clambered aboard, one wag inevitably positioned himself on the platform and rang the bell.
‘Do you stop at the Savoy Hotel?’ It was the old, old joke that Joe Hoyles couldn’t resist asking.
‘No, sir!’ The ‘conductor’ was equally familiar with the old chestnut. ‘Can’t afford it! Did you say a twopenny one, sir? Comes cheaper if you take a return.’
But for one in three of the boys it would be a one-way ticket.
It was not much more than thirty miles to their destination but it took the entire night to get there. Two whole brigades of the 37th Division alone were on the move and there were hold-ups and delays which came as a welcome rest to the war-worn buses if not to their passengers. For the first part of the journey, before the lateness of the hour made it possible to drowse off even in the discomfort of buses whose suspension had never been designed for long distance travel, there was chat and banter and sing-songs – anything to pass the time and to keep at bay disturbing thoughts of the ordeal ahead. Although no one had informed them of the purpose of the journey, the men had a shrewd suspicion that they were ‘in for it’. Most of them were excited at the prospect.
Joe Hoyles had a flowery turn of phrase which perhaps sprang from the attachment he had formed for the death-and-glory reputation of the Rifle Brigade as a lad before the war. It was not necessarily to the taste of some of his less flamboyant comrades and it was couched in terms which owed not a little to the prose of the Empire-building adventure stories he had read as a schoolboy, but he had fairly summed up the feelings of many others in the speech he had made to the Company Officers of the Battalion when they had attended the A Company Corporals’ Christmas Dinner:
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