The night was clear, the rain had gone off, but the Germans chose to send over gas to cheer them on their way. Next morning the sun came out but few of the boys woke up until it was high in the sky. It had not been possible to find them accommodation in a proper camp, even if there had been time to take them so far behind the line. The Brigade found itself lying on the open ground in the vicinity of the Carnoy craters at Casino Point where, exactly two months ago today, in the wake of the exploding mines, the 18th Division had broken the line and forged exultantly ahead with the French at its shoulder.
It was hardly a camp, but, among the debris of abandoned ammunition boxes, the litter of empty shell cases that marked the old gun positions, wigwam-like bivouacs of canvas and canes had been improvised to shelter the men, some captured dugouts served as accommodation for the officers and two big marquees had been put up to serve as dining and recreation halls by day and dormitories by night. There was bacon for breakfast, and plenty to go round, for – discounting the sick – the Brigade had lost six hundred men in its nine-day stint in the trenches in front of Guillemont. There was dinner to look forward to – doubtless only ‘His Majesty’s stew’ but a good deal more palatable than His Majesty’s jaw-breaking biscuits, cold beans and bully beef, which was the unvarying diet in the line. Before dinner there was an issue of cigarettes and later the mail came up with letters and parcels from home. The guns still hammering the front two miles away were an unpleasant reminder of what awaited them but, as they lounged on groundsheets on the squelching earth, rapidly drying out under the warm sun, the boys inclined towards the opinion that it all added up to an almost perfect day. The officers, as preoccupied as the men with drying out and catching up on sleep, had kept well out of the way; no sergeants had appeared with lists of obligatory fatigues and, towards evening, Brigadier-General Shute came up himself from Brigade Headquarters to look round with a benevolent eye and see that all was well. By his personal order the boys received a rum ration to which, being out of the line, they had, strictly speaking, no entitlement. When darkness fell, although the sky behind them quivered and pulsated with the glare of battle, almost extinguishing the efforts of the stars to shine through the warm night, although they were allowed no lights, the boys sat on in the open air, reluctant for the day to end.
Fred White and Freddie Stevens (more commonly known in the Army as ‘Nobbler and Jerry’) sat together replete with sweet biscuits. They did a good Cockney double act – perhaps not quite so good as the original ‘Nobbler and Jerry’ who had won fame in Fred Karno’s Concert Troupe, but good enough to have earned their nicknames. They had been friends since their not-so-long-ago schooldays, near-neighbours at home in Camden Town and members of the same breezy bunch of mates who, on halcyon Sunday evenings before the war, used to walk across Hampstead Heath to Jack Straw’s Castle to spend a convivial evening for the price of a glass or two of beer. This outing had been the highlight of the week and, rather more intoxicated on high spirits than on alcohol, they used to swing back across the heath, singing in exaggerated harmony:
We were sailing along on Moonlight Bay,
We could hear the voices ringing,
They seemed to say
‘You have stolen my heart,
Now don’t go ‘way!’
As we sang Love’s old sweet song,
On Moonlight Bay.
The weekend the war began they had been singing this favourite as they tramped home in Bank Holiday mood. After that the two Freds had not felt much like singing, nor even like a tramp across the heath. Things had changed after their mates went into the Army. ‘Nobbler and Jerry’ were equally anxious to join. They had attained the military age of nineteen but what they had not attained was the necessary height. Stevens – with the advantage of one inch over White – was barely five feet four and in the choosy days of August 1914 the Army still stuck to the minimum pre-war requirement of five feet seven. It was a sore subject.
Rifleman F. C. White, No. R.8529, B Coy., Bomber, 10th Btn., King’s Royal Rifle Corps, 59th Brigade, 20th Division
Most of our mates were in the London Territorials. Of course they went away immediately the war started and Freddie and I and my brother and one or two others who wasn’t in the Territorials always used to march with them wherever they went, so we marched with them to Waterloo Station. That was 4 August, when war was declared. We was all as excited as anything. We all wanted to join up. My brother, who was taller than me, joined up and went in. I went up. They said, ‘No, don’t want you! You’re too small!’ Same thing happened to Freddie.
It came to the last day of 1914, and there was only Freddie and me left of the whole bunch. Freddie’s brother had just got killed (he was a Regular in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps) and me and Freddie was mooching about and we was fed up. We said, ‘Come on, let’s have another go!’ So we goes to a recruiting office in Crowndale Road, St Pancras. Freddie goes in first, up to the Recruiting Sergeant, and I’m standing behind him.
‘Yes?’ says the Sergeant, ‘what do you want?’
‘Join the Army.’
‘What do you want to go in?’
‘King’s Royal Rifles.’
‘You can’t go in there. They’re full up.’
‘Why not? My brother was killed in there!’
The Recruiting Sergeant softened a bit at that, and he says, ‘All right. Sign here, take your shilling and away you go.’
Then it comes to me, but I got a flea in my ear! He said, ‘You come back when you’re a bit taller. We don’t want you!’ I thought, ‘That’s good! Freddie’s in, I’m out, left on me own – the lone bloke.’ When we got outside, Freddie and me talked a bit about what we should do and we decided to have another try. So we walked about three miles from St Pancras to Holloway Road to another recruiting office. I goes in there.
‘What do you want?’
‘Join the army.’
‘What do you want to go in?’
‘King’s Royal Rifles.’
‘You can’t go in there. Full up!’
‘Well, I ain’t going in anything at all,’ I said. ‘My pal’s going in there tomorrow.’ So, he says, ‘Oh, all right. Sign here.’ Didn’t measure me or anything! Off we went next day, down to the depot at Winchester, and we stuck together all the way along. Never was parted! Of course, later on we had different jobs with the battalion. Freddie went on the Lewis-guns and I stayed in B Company with the bombers. But every time we was out of the line we got together and stuck together.
That evening, sitting under the stars near the Carnoy Craters, was the last time the two Freds would meet until after the war. Tomorrow night they would be on their way back to the line and the battle that loomed ahead. Tonight they were thinking of old times. ‘Nobbler’ White’s mouth organ was worn and battered by long service in the Army and a year or more in the trenches, but he could still squeeze a tune out of it. For most of the evening he had been playing the accompaniment to a selection of the bawdy choruses that had enhanced the Tommies’ musical education since their arrival in France. Now he changed the mood.
We were sailing along on Moonlight Bay…
Freddie Stevens took up the words but they seemed inappropriate to the circumstances. After a little thought and a few false starts he came up with a better version. The lads liked it, and one by one they joined in.
I was strolling along in Gillymong –
With the Minniewerfers singing
Their old sweet song
And I said to old Fritz,
‘We’re here to stay!
And we’ll kick your arse from here
To Moonlight Bay.’
The best that could be said for it was that it was a good tune.
On the following evening, as they prepared for the long trek back up the line, the boys felt less inclined to sing, and they did not much like the Padre’s choice of hymn. Doubtless he meant well, but their thoughts were on the battle ahead and in the circumstances the sentiments expressed i
n Nearer, my God, to Thee, struck a little too close to home. The singing was, to say the least, ragged. The boys stood bareheaded in the low rays of the evening sun waiting for dusk and the order to march off and it was noticeable that the Padre’s voice boomed above them all.
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee,
E’en though it be a cross
That raiseth me;
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to thee!
In a few minutes’ time they would be shouldering rifles and turning their faces towards the sound of the guns. In a few hours they would be going over the top. The 59th Brigade was well under strength, for there had been no time to reinforce them and they were under no illusions as to what lay ahead. Under the circumstances only the most resigned of Christian souls in their ranks could join in the hymn-singing with enthusiasm – and even the voices of that select band trailed off when it came to the third verse.
There let my way appear
Steps unto Heaven.
All that Thou sendest me
In mercy given,
Angels to beckon me,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to thee!
Still, the boys had had a good feed and a good rest and, as the smallest man in the battalion, Fred White was suitably grateful. It was fortunate that he was wiry as well as diminutive for, as a company bomber, he was carrying excess weight in the form of a bomber’s jacket with no less than eight Mills bombs tucked into its individual pockets and he was tired already. For most of the day the Bombers had been hard at it priming countless boxes of bombs in preparation for the battle, while their mates had been taking things easy. But one unexpected happening had cheered Fred up. In one of the boxes he had found a note tucked neatly into the top row of bombs. It gave the name and address of the girl munition-worker who had packed them and added the interesting information that she was blonde, blue-eyed and aged nineteen. The message ended encouragingly, Good Luck, Tommy. Fred had taken the note as a good omen and was carrying it into battle, tucked like a talisman into his breast pocket, beside a letter from his sweetheart, Ethel.
Chapter 19
Next day the sun shone and the troops splashed across the steaming mud of No Man’s Land to capture Guillemont.
It was difficult to see the sun through the fumes, the smoke, the flying debris, the spouting columns of liquid mud that filled the sky and fell back to soak and blind the Tommies as they pressed forward on the heels of the creeping barrage. There was still a ‘fixed barrage’, a careful timetable of ‘lifts’, that would move steadily ahead to fall on the second and third German lines as the troops advanced – but this time they were advancing under the umbrella of a second barrage, moving smoothly ahead less than fifty yards beyond them, leading them to the objective and screening them from the enemy as they went.
It was not easy to keep going at a steady pace when every instinct nurtured by training and experience urged every man to throw himself flat. It took one sort of bravado to sing of ‘strolling along in Gillymong’ but, in the growing mistrust between gunners and infantry, most of whom had tragic experience of the worn-out guns firing short, it took bravado of quite another sort to go forward steadily behind a curtain of explosions in the unswerving belief that they would keep their distance as you progressed.
The mounds of brick dust and rubble which appeared to the naked eye to be all that was left of the village of Guillemont were no longer so innocent-looking to the eye of the Command. With the events at Thiepval, at Ovillers, at la Boisselle, disturbingly fresh in their minds they had no doubt that, beneath the field of ruins, the enemy was waiting in a Pandora’s box of tunnels and shelters and dugouts, and that, when the lid was opened, they would be ready to catapult to the surface with the impetus of a tight-coiled spring, suddenly released. The nub of the British plan was to open the lid first – from the outside.
Sergeant A. Paterson, DCM, MM, No. 52574, A Coy., 11th (S) Btn., The Rifle Brigade
You went down steps to these places, but the steps didn’t go straight down. They would go down, say, three steps to the left, then three steps straight followed by four to the right, until they reached the bottom – the idea being that nobody could throw a bomb directly down the hole of the entrance. Ordinary bombs, demolition bombs, would just burst halfway down and the worst they would do would be block up the passage, and they always had an escape route. So our job was to demolish the front of them, break down the doors and entrances, open them up a bit so that the Bombers could get at them. Well, the Jerries weren’t just going to sit there and let us hammer away demolishing the front of these dugouts, so, first thing, we had to throw down phosphorus bombs – smoke bombs. You’d strike the smoke bomb on an ignition brassard you had strapped round your arm and fling it down the steps. The bombs gave off a thick suffocating smoke which, being heavy, flowed down the winding steps and spread out in the large spaces below so that it would either drive the Germans out or suffocate them.
We had to carry extra haversacks full of these phosphorus bombs and, as well as that and extra ammunition and all the rest of our normal equipment, every man had to carry either a pick or a shovel, one each. It was a wonder we were able to get out of the trench, because we had to get over a big bank that we’d made ourselves in front of our trenches for cover, and then beyond that was all the wire and water.
Zero Hour was supposed to be midday. The idea was that, about ten minutes before Zero Hour, our bombardment of their lines increased in volume and, when that noise stopped, which meant that your covering fire from the field guns was lifting ahead, that was your signal to go over the top. Well, maybe the firing stopped. If it did, nobody noticed it, because the Germans were still bombarding our front line and the shells were bursting all over the place and the shells of our heavy barrage were going over our heads. The noise was so deafening that, days later, it was still resounding in our ears – and we were supposed to listen! We went over by the time on our watches and my platoon was leading, in extended order, three to four paces between each man. You couldn’t say, ‘You go straight across that way.’ You’d have to go round huge holes and, with more shells falling all around, it was very difficult to keep going in a straight line. Very difficult to keep the men together in any kind of formation. Very difficult to know what was happening.
What was happening was that part of the 59th Brigade, having started off fractionally early, was advancing into the line of its own barrage. It was the 10th Battalion of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, making straight for Guillemont village, who started earliest of all and who took the greatest punishment. But those who survived to reach the German wire and push through gaps to the first objective, just as the barrage lifted, had the advantage of surprise.
Rifleman F. C. White, No. R.85229, B Coy., Bomber, 10th Btn., King’s Royal Rifle Corps, 59th Brigade, 20th Division
There was me and this other bloke and our instructions was to make for the church gates at Guillemont. When we got to the church gate there was no church gate! All there was was a pile of bricks! Anyway, we’d been told there was a deep dugout under the church – because there always was one in a village church, with the vault and all. We was armed with about half a dozen Mills grenades in a waistcoat in the front of us, and we found the dugout entrance and I stood at one side of it and this other bloke, he stood opposite. There was no door on it – it was open and I got hold of a bomb, pulled the pin out, flung the bomb down. Nothing happened! He pulled the pin out and he slung a bomb down. Nothing happened! I got another bomb out, pulled the pin out, flung it down and, as soon as it went down this time, the bloody thing comes straight up again and exploded on the stairs! It didn’t half give us a turn! So, I said to this bloke, ‘Come on, we’ll go somewhere else. It’s too hot here!’
Sergeant A. K. Paterson, DCM, MM, No. 52574, A Coy., 11th (S) Btn., The Rifle Brigade
We had to take six German lines and it wa
s all plain to be seen. There was a sunken road, then there was another line of trenches and then there was a pillbox which was the entrance to a line of deep dugouts and a machine-gun was blazing away from it, but the bombers took care of that, and on we went. Every time we got to the next objective there were fewer and fewer men. At about one o’clock, we’d just taken what had been the Germans’ support line when I found that our Company Commander had been killed and that the Second-in-Command was severely wounded in the head. Our reserves were just passing through us to take the next objective, which was a sunken road, and that gave us an hour’s break, so I spent the time scrounging around in all the smoke and all the deafening noise trying to find out just who was there and who wasn’t. There was nobody! No officers to be seen, no other platoon sergeant besides myself, so there was nothing for it but to take charge of the Company because time was going on and we had to line up with the 6th Battalion of the Ox and Bucks Regiment ready to go on to the next objective and over the top again at half-past two. The next objective was supposed to be Wedge Wood Valley. Wedge Wood was the landmark. But there was no Wedge Wood. It had completely disappeared. That was our final objective, on the other side of Guillemont – the line on top of the valley, facing the apex of Leuze Wood.
It was late in the afternoon by the time we got there and I started the riflemen digging a new line near the top of Wedge Wood Valley. By dusk the job was finished after a fashion. In my spare haversack I carried conical-shaped flares, yellow and red, and we had to lay them along the line of our position at three-feet intervals. We lit them when it got dark enough, just as a spotting aeroplane flew over, to show the position of the new front line.
After the flares had died down I took the roll call. Out of our whole company we mustered, besides myself, the Corporal, one Acting Corporal and thirty-seven men, including two stretcher-bearers. I sent one man back to Headquarters with a list of the names and inspected the rifles. Then I posted some sentries and lookouts a short way down No Man’s side of Wedge Valley and, after a bit, I called the roll again – just in case anyone had come in or caught up. No one had.1
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