SOMME

by Lyn Macdonald

  Gentlemen,

  On behalf of my fellow corporals and myself, I welcome you here tonight. We are pleased that you have come to see us and regret that convention prevents your partaking of this meal which you have so thoughtfully provided.

  We have invited you here tonight, to drink your health. We are fortunate in our officers, and when the time comes we shall show you how we appreciate our good fortune. Yes, gentlemen, when the time comes, when once again we go into the line, you will find us ever ready cheerfully to obey and completely to fulfil our duties. You will find us ready to uphold and, if possible, excel the high traditions of the Rifle Brigade and to emulate the noble example of Britain’s sons.

  Fellow corporals, I ask you to rise and drink the health of our officers, hoping they will be with us to the end of the war and may that end be speedy and gloriously victorious.

  Joe’s speech was a tour de force. Its eloquence was not unconnected with the generous libations of alcoholic refreshment with which most of the Battalion had been toasting the occasion for most of the day. The 13th Rifle Brigade had had a whale of a Christmas at Hannescamps and, lurching in their unwieldy convoy past the end of the very road that led to that village, which otherwise had little about it to inspire nostalgic memories, they nudged each other and laughed as they remembered it.

  B Company had done best of all. Between them they had collected twenty-five pounds towards the Christmas festivities which their officers had generously doubled. Having made their arrangements well in advance, they had actually sent to London to Fortnum and Mason’s for special delicacies and, while most of the other companies contented themselves with pork, B Company had enjoyed turkey, pheasant and ham. The dinner started at lunchtime and, when it ended, late in the evening, transport, in the form of wheelbarrows, had to be pressed into service to convey some of the more enthusiastic revellers back to their billets.

  Number 13 Platoon had excelled themselves in a way that might have caused some astonishment to those who had known them such a brief time before as earnest members of the Boys’ Brigade.

  Rifleman Walter Monckton, MM, No. 2765, 13th (S) Btn., The Rifle Brigade

  We all gave up our blankets to cover the walls of the barn and we covered the beams with evergreens and paper flowers. We got long tables with forms on either side and at one end of the barn we built a stage and draped it with white blankets and footlights made from biscuit tins and candles for a concert we were going to have later on. In the centre of the barn someone actually managed to construct a ‘chandelier’ with reflectors made of bits of cut-out biscuit tin and with several dozen candles in it. On the wall opposite the door in the middle of the barn Richardson had built a tablet on a draped blue blanket. At the top was a big Rifle Brigade badge with a Union Jack on one side and a tricolour on the other and immediately below this in huge letters: ‘13 R.B.’ And underneath we had written: ‘Its honour we will keep. To its glory we will add.’ And we surrounded the whole thing with a shield shaped in cotton wool.

  I can’t remember where we got the cotton wool from, but we must have had plenty, because, on the wall opposite the stage, we had enough of it to stick up a whole poem of two verses. It took absolutely ages forming the letters of the poem with strips of cotton wool and sticking them on to the wall. It was Sid Daynes who made it up, and it said:

  There is a good time coming some day!

  May that day be very soon.

  May we all enjoy that some day,

  That’s the wish of 13 Platoon.

  This season is noted for wishes

  So here’s one from 13 Platoon

  May you safely meet your dear ones,

  Safely and well and soon.

  It was not great verse and Sid Daynes, the proud composer, did not represent a threat to the status of the official Poet Laureate, but 13 Platoon were delighted with it and guests who visited their festivities were equally impressed, particularly the battalion Pioneer Corporal who insisted on pointing out this and the other insignia, slogans and decorations which beautified the barn, to each individual officer as he did the traditional rounds of ‘men’s dinners’ on Christmas Day. The Corporal had evidently ‘done the rounds’ himself, but the officers overlooked his occasional stumbles in speech and in gait, took it in good part and dutifully admired it all. They toasted the health of the Platoon in whisky or champagne and presented them with several boxes of good cigars. It was a fitting end to the day. Not only had 13 Platoon dined on roast beef and Christmas Pudding, enjoyed chocolate biscuits and tinned peaches for tea but they had even had supper of cheese sandwiches, nuts, oranges, washed down by yet more champagne and white wine.

  The concert was a fiasco but that was only because, by the time it was due to begin, most of the audience and some of the performers had disappeared under the tables.

  Like the spring holiday month at Auxi, Christmas at Hannescamps shone like a bright beacon in the Battalion’s collective memory as they lurched towards the Somme.

  Corporal Joe Hoyles, MM, No. 3237, 13th (S) Btn., The Rifle Brigade

  On a night journey most of the boys who could packed into the lower deck, although it got very fuggy in there, what with the crowd, and the smoking, and the windows being boarded up. In one way it was better to be on the top deck, but there wasn’t much chance of sleeping. Even in July it was pretty cold and the top was completely open in these old buses. You went up a spiral staircase on the outside to get to it and packed into the wooden seats, completely in the open air. These old buses swayed like anything, especially with the number of troops that were packed on to them, and all our gear and, at times, when we went round a corner we really thought she was going over! Then, another hazard was the wires. There were so many telephone wires slung across the roads, and fairly low too, so we really had to crouch down low in our seats and keep our rifles down too, so as not to get caught up in them. There was a rumour going around, though I don’t know how true it was, that one chap had been decapitated travelling on the top of a bus, so we were all scared stiff, but of course we made a joke of it. In spite of the cold, I dozed off a bit, but I remember waking up because I was sharing a seat with another chap and he suddenly stood up and shouted, ‘Look, boys, the dawn!’ And there was just that little bit of light in the sky in the east. But it was well after sun-up when we got to Bresle.

  The dawn was rising over the Somme and in the first half-light, still trapped in his shell-hole, half-starved, half-frozen and half-dead, Ernest Deighton was roused to consciousness by a sound he had been awaiting for four long days. It was the noise of thundering feet and in another moment a line of British troops rushed past towards the Germans’ second line. They had already swept over the first, but Deighton had heard not a hint of the fight. Now he was fully conscious and now he knew from the direction of the attacking troops where his own trenches lay. He also knew that it was probably his last chance to get back to them.

  Private E. Deighton, No. 25884, 8th Btn., King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry

  I thought, ‘Here goes, I’m off’ I knew I were a dead man if I didn’t. I scrambled out and hobbled and crawled back as best I could and even then I don’t know whether I’m going the right way or the wrong way. When I got to not far off the first trench, this voice cried out, ‘Halt!’ and I just tumbled into it. They couldn’t help me back further, they’d just taken that trench and they had to stop there, so somehow I got out of it and I had to crawl all the way back across our old No Man’s Land to our own front trench. I managed to get to the barbed wire and I found one bit of a gap and I went through it. It took me about two hours. It would have been twelve hundred yards altogether. And when I tumbled into that trench they said, ‘Who are you?’ and all I could say was: ‘Orange.’ That were our password on the first day. ‘Orange.’ And I was gone, straight away. Passed out. When I came round I were lying on the fire step and they said, ‘The remnants of your lot are in Long Valley.’ So the stretcher-bearers took me down to Long Valley.1 There were n
one of our lot there. Just the MO. It was Captain Marshall and he says, ‘Good God! This is 87 in now. There’ll be no more!’ After that they transported me down to the Canadian Hospital and I was down there six weeks.

  Tom Easton was out as well. The 19th Division which had been in reserve on 1 July had moved up on the left of those who remained and Tom himself had signalled them in.

  Private Tom Easton, No. 1000, 21st Btn., Northumberland Fusiliers (Tyneside Scottish)

  It was about the middle of the forenoon after the attack. We were still down the dugout. We’d had no rations and nothing to eat except some tea. Major Acklom was a regular officer with the Highland Light Infantry and he knew all the tricks of the old soldiers’ trade. He suggested that we should tease out some sandbag rags, put them in a tin with some candlegrease, and set light to them with another tin on the top with some water in it. It took hours to warm up and it was nowhere near boiling, but we put the tea leaves and sugar in and let it all warm up together and eventually we got a fairly hot drink that was better than nothing.

  Halfway through the next morning in came this Colonel from the 19th Division. They called them the Butterflies, but he was a hard nut. He said he wanted a signaller and I was instructed to go outside and take a signal flag with me, so out we went in front of what had been the first German line and still not very far away from the enemy. The officer gave me instructions. He said, ‘I will give you one letter and you must signal that to our own front line four times.’ So he gave me the letter and I made the signal. Suddenly, very slowly and methodically, a whole armed company I’d no idea was there jumped up and came forward in extended order with fixed bayonets and passed us and went forward to the line the Germans were still holding in front of la Boisselle. After a minute or two another letter was given to me and, with exactly the same precision, another company moved forward and passed on their way. By this time, of course, the Germans had seen what was going on and their guns had begun to roar out. But I went on signalling, steady, as he gave me the instructions. The third lot came over and then, after a while, the fourth. When they’d passed by, the Colonel turned to me and said, ‘Well done, Signaller!’ and then he turned and moved after his troops into the battle. I went back down into the tunnel.

  Tom was only too happy to get out of the open for the German guns were now registered on the advancing troops and shells were falling too close for comfort. Roy Bealing was in the thick of it.

  Private Roy Bealing, MM, No. 3437, 6th Btn., The Wiltshire Regiment, 19th (Western) Division

  We’d been waiting in our old front-line trench. We’d had a rough time even before we got there. There’s a ridge getting on towards la Boisselle and then there’s a dip and the Germans were all on higher ground and they could see us all coming down in single file, perhaps a thousand of us going to this trench, and they started shelling. One shell pitched right in front of me and knocked out Sergeant Viney and two or three more. We had to keep going and we had to step over one and step over another to carry on. But we had to keep going. We were thankful to get into what was going to be our assault trench, but, what with the shells exploding and what with it being our first time over the top, we felt pretty damned bad as we waited there. It seemed like an age, and then Captain Reid came along the top of the trench – right out in the open! - I suppose it was the only way he could pass the word along the company and he must have had a couple of machine-gun bullets through his water bottle because the water was spouting out of it. He yelled down, ‘Fix your bayonets and get ready to go over when you hear the whistle.’

  I was beside a young chap called Lucas and he was a bundle of nerves. He was shaking, yes. He was simply shivering and shaking like a leaf. He could hardly hold his rifle, never mind fix his bayonet. So I fixed mine and then I said, ‘Here you are, Lucas,’ and I fixed his for him. It would have taken him a week to fix his bayonet, the state he was in! He wasn’t one of a new draft. He was one of the older ones, and I was right sorry for him.

  The worst of waiting in the trench was that the Germans had a machine-gun trained on it going backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, traversing and coming round every couple of minutes, and the bullets were cutting the sandbags on the parapet just as if they were cutting them with a knife. And, if a bullet didn’t get you, this shower of sand and dirt was going straight into your eyes although the sandbags were a couple of feet above our heads. Terrible feeling, knowing you’ve got to go over the top with your eyes full of sand and watering and not able to see anything. We were to the right of la Boisselle village and the stretch of trench where we had to go across was just in front of this huge mine crater. We didn’t know it was there, nobody told us about that, just that we had to go over and on past that line they’d captured, on to the second line of German trenches and take them.

  When the whistle went, I threw my rifle on top of the trench and clambered out of it, grabbed the rifle and started going forward. There were shell-holes everywhere. I hadn’t gone far before I fell in one. There were so many shell-holes you couldn’t get round them. But you had to go on so, every time I stumbled and fell in a shell-hole, I just waited a quarter of a minute, had another breath, then out of it and on again. I must have fallen half a dozen times before I got to the first line, and there were lads falling all over the place. You didn’t know whether they were just tripping up, like me, or whether they were going down with bullets in them, because it wasn’t just the shells exploding round about, it was the machine guns hammering out like hell from the third German line because it was on slightly higher ground. Lucas went down. He was killed before he even got to the first trench – the one that was partly in our hands.

  I got to the parapet – it looked just like a parapet, chalk banked up, and I flung myself over it. Well then, I didn’t know where I was! I went straight down sixty feet or more, sliding and slithering. I thought I’d never come to the bottom! Of course it was this big crater where they’d blown the mine. There were half a dozen of us all rattling down, shouting. We picked ourselves up and Captain Lefroy was there and Sergeant Stone and just about fourteen or fifteen of us, at a glance, out of the whole company. Captain Lefroy got us together and we clambered up the opposite side of the crater and lay there, well under cover, halfway up it and looking round to see if any more was coming in. We had two brothers named Moxham and one of them was with us and, looking across, we see his brother coming to the opposite lip of the crater. He stopped and didn’t throw himself over it like we had, unexpected like, he just stood there looking down into it. We all shouted, ‘Come on, come on! Don’t stand there! That bloomin’ machine-gun’ll come round. He’ll catch you!’ But he just stood there a moment too long – and it did get him! He was killed there. Of course his brother didn’t know what to do with himself. But there was nothing we could do – just lay there. We couldn’t get forward. There weren’t enough of us anyway!

  A while after that another chap called Bill Parratt came over and he was getting down the side of the crater, careful like, when a shell dropped almost right beside him. There was a big cloud of smoke and when it cleared we saw that it had dropped him right in the bottom of the crater. He was lying on his back and one of his legs had been blown off and it was two or three yards away from him. He was hurt bad. He must have been in pain and agony, but there was nothing we could do for him. As the day went on, and it got towards evening, he started to cry out. ‘Captain Lefroy, come and shoot me.’ He kept calling over and over again, ‘Captain Lefroy, come and shoot me.’ We got fed up with hearing him calling out. Makes you jangly, all this calling, ‘Come and shoot me, come and shoot me.’ So the Captain crawled down and went over to him and pulled a packet out of his pocket and it was morphia tablets. He knew he couldn’t do nothing for him, just give him these morphia tablets, and he got them down Bill and after a bit he went quiet and gradually faded out.

  There was nothing to do but to stay there. Huddled into the side of the crater it seemed to the small party of the Wil
tshires that they were in the very cone of the volcano the crater so strongly resembled as the night flashed and roared around them. After a brief lull in the early evening, it had all started up again as another brigade of their division had moved up to renew the attack on the village of la Boisselle a few hundred yards away to the left. Although it was dark, with the merest hint of a new moon in the sky, the lines in front of la Boisselle were so close that the German sentries were alerted by a shifting shadowy mass of movement, by the unavoidable clink of equipment, by a hoarse suspiration compounded of a thousand whispers, as a thousand men crept out to lie in front of the British lines, ready to launch an attack. Nervous machine-gunners started firing indiscriminately ahead and, a moment later, the field guns opened up, sending a hailstorm of shrapnel over the waiting troops. The groans and cries of the wounded confirmed the Germans’ suspicions, if any confirmation had been needed and, in the glare of the bursting shells, the eerie light of the flares that rocketed from their lines, the British were as visible as if they had been standing up in full view and on parade. In fact, they had their heads well down.

  Crouched close to the evil-smelling earth, Fred Darby of the 10th Battalion, The Worcestershire Regiment, found that he was sharing his shell-hole with Tom Turrall, a bomber of C Company. Darby’s acquaintance with him was slight, for Turrall was a surly man not given to conviviality and with the reputation of being a rebel. He had spent the previous week in the guardroom – or what passed for a guardroom in the village where the Worcesters had rested behind the line – and although at Lieutenant Jennings’ insistence he had been released to go into the battle, he was still, officially, under close arrest. It was far from being the first time that he had been reprimanded and disciplined during his service with the Battalion, and his crime this time had been ‘insubordination to an NCO’. Turrall was a troublesome soldier out of the line. In the line, however, the ugly streak of aggressiveness in his character which made him a thorn in the flesh of the Battalion, also made him a formidable fighter, and Lieutenant Jennings was well aware of it. Now, sheltering from the rain of red-hot shrapnel, noticing that Turrall was carrying a bag of bombs that could easily be set alight, Fred Darby did not regard him as the ideal companion in adversity.