Next night, 11 September, the tanks began their slow grinding journey towards the battle. With no lights of their own they needed the moon to show them the way. They had been parked well back, closely guarded, and shrouded in tarpaulin covers so vast that imagination could barely conceive the nature and the dreadfulness of whatever mechanical mammoth might be skulking underneath. They looked so much like humpback monsters that the troops, agog with rumour and gossip, had begun to call them ‘Mastodons’. The Army, hoping that any such rumours as might reach the Germans would be scotched by the supposition that they were portable water tanks for the benefit of the troops in the line, called them ‘tanks’. The Admiralty – under whose aegis they had first been developed – called them ‘land-ships’. After two years of almost static warfare, of fruitless effort and endeavour, of vulnerable flesh perishing against unyielding iron and concrete, after two months and more of calculating the bitter cost of every painfully captured yard of ground on the Somme, the Staff were calling them a Godsend. Their hopes were high. The trials had been impressive. There was hardly an obstacle the tanks could not run over as easily as a child might propel a wooden toy, step by step, up a flight of stairs. They could uproot trees, over-run trenches, crush barbed-wire entanglements and, given enough of them, surely they could crush the enemy too.
The Army had unfortunately not been given enough of them and the mammoth engines of the fifty prototypes they did receive were already fast degenerating through the wear and tear of the very training exercises, trials and tests which, ironically, were essential to their success. There had been neither enough time nor enough tanks to train the infantry to work with them in new techniques of attack. There had been little enough time to train the embryo tank crews to handle them.
A tank weighed twenty-eight tons. It took one hour and one gallon of petrol to travel half a mile. Ten had been kept in reserve and now, in the light of the full moon, the roads were shaking and vibrating under the weight of forty-two tanks as they went clanking to their assembly positions a mile or two behind the front line between Fricourt and Bray. The soldiers who saw them looming out of the night like immense black whales could hardly believe their eyes.
The tank crews were elated to be on the move at last, but the excitement of some of their Commanders was tinged with unease. They had been training for barely three months. Their instructions for the battle were complicated. Closeted with the Divisional Staff Officers they had spent hours studying maps and aerial photographs of the routes their tanks would take when the battle started. They had studied the Order of Battle and the timetables of each Corps and Division and, finally, each Commander had drawn up his own map, worked out the compass bearings from point to point, the estimated time of his arrival at each place and then readjusted his calculations to fit in with timing of the infantry. They had been bombarded by an avalanche of directions, instructions, advice and dire warnings in such profusion that there had not been enough written copies to go round. It had been almost impossible to memorize them all. They were ordered, furthermore, that their painfully prepared maps must be similarly imprinted on their minds. They were not to be allowed to carry them into action. It was hardly surprising, as the tanks lumbered towards their first engagement, that many brows were furrowed.
Certain Staff Officers at GHQ were worried too. They doubted the advisability of using the tanks at all. If two hundred had been available it might have been a different matter, but could a mere forty-two, spread over the fifteen kilometres of the attack, possibly succeed in breaking the line wide open and ushering the British Army through the gap? It was a moot point. It had been argued, discussed and gone over again and again. There were those who wished to wait until the tanks were available in sufficient numbers to guarantee success. There were those who were tempted to try the few forerunners out as an experiment but were nonetheless worried that, by doing so, they would lose the vital element of surprise which in a future massed assault might easily bowl the Germans over. And there were those who, like the Commander-in-Chief, felt that, whatever the risks, the opportunity must be seized to break the deadlock before autumn turned to winter. It would be a gamble but it was their only chance and overall confidence was high. This time there was a good deal more than the hope of success – there was near-certainty.
The guns struck up the overture to the battle on the morning of 12 September and this time they were ranging uncompromisingly on Bapaume. On the 13th, GHQ sent out a ringing call to arms. It was addressed to all ranks of the Fourth and Reserve Armies and appealed to them for ‘bold and vigorous action’. It pointed out that the British Infantry outnumbered the Germans by four to one, that the Allies had far more guns and almost total supremacy in the air. It spoke of the cavalry massed to exploit the gains of the infantry. It hinted at the mysterious Secret Weapon which ‘may well produce great moral and material effects’. It pointed out the losses and hardships suffered by the enemy, the deterioration of his morale, the ‘confusion and disorganization’ in his ranks. It assured the troops that there was little depth or strength left in the enemy’s defences, that his reserves were weak and ‘composed entirely of units which have already suffered defeat’.
It boomed encouragement:
Under such conditions risks may be taken with advantage which would be unwise if the circumstances were less favourable to us.
The assault must be pushed home with the greatest vigour, boldness, and resolution, and success must be followed up without hesitation or delay to the utmost limits of the power of endurance of the troops.
The bombardment redoubled. All day shells thundered on the Quadrilateral and on the last uncaptured corner of Delville Wood. The Guards edged forward in front of Ginchy and straightened their line. On their right the 6th Division pushed forward to the Ginchy–Morval road but stopped short in the withering face of the Quadrilateral itself.
That night it poured with rain. Just as he had been a day or two earlier in bivouacs above Fricourt, Len Lovell, in the 6th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, was occupying a position adjacent to the Guards, or at least his Brigade was immediately to the left of theirs. Lovell himself was not aware of being adjacent to anyone, with the exception of Bobby Pearce and a handful of A Company’s Bombers. They had been sent forward from the ragged linked-up shell-holes which served the 6th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry as a trenchline, to see if, by some miracle, the Germans on the edge of the wood had survived the pounding of the day’s bombardment or if, as was fervently hoped, they had had the good sense to retire. In Delville Wood hardly one of the skeleton tree trunks stood more than two feet high. Many were broken off so low that only a few treacherous splinters spiked from their jagged roots in the path of the Bombers crawling belly-down in the pitch-black, feeling ahead for obstacles, striving impossibly for silence, stifling curses when unseen talons of broken timber caught and tore at their hands and clothing, stopping for long moments to listen as they drew near the edge of the wood where the Germans had last been seen. They were experienced raiders. They were used to it and, unlike the Guards, they were handier with bombs than with bullets.
Bobby Pearce had recently proved himself to be just a bit too handy with bombs, or rather, with an unexploded trench-mortar shell he dragged back from one of their patrols in No Man’s Land and whose innards – being of a mechanical turn of mind – he was anxious to inspect. It was unfortunate that he accidentally dropped the nose-cap on the floor of the Bombers’ billet. Five sleeping men received a rude awakening plus painful, if convenient, Blighty wounds in their feet. In the bedlam that followed the explosion the coke brazier was knocked over and the billet burnt down. As Section NCO Len Lovell received a severe reprimand. Bobby Pearce received a nasty head wound and, following his recovery, a Court-Martial. He had rejoined the Battalion on the march down to the Somme and now, creeping forward through Delville Wood, Lovell was glad of it.
Even before the embellishment of the ugly new scar he now bore on his forehead, Bobby
Pearce had a face that only a mother could love. He could neither read nor write. It was Lovell who wrote his letters home and read out, with difficulty, the infrequent, near-illegible replies. Pearce was a rough diamond and an old soldier. He was entitled to wear the campaign medal of the South African War, but he scorned it as a ‘bare-arsed medal’. That war had ended before Bobby had got nearer the front than Gibraltar and he did not agree with the opinion of the Army that he qualified for the statutory decoration. Pearce was a hard swearer and a hard drinker. Lovell had covered up for him, had got him out of trouble a dozen times but there was no man he would rather have had at his own shoulder when there was trouble ahead.
Corporal Len Lovell, No. 18692, 6th Btn., King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry
When we got to within a few yards of what we thought was Jerry’s position, we lay there for a long time waiting for a lull in the shelling. All we had to do was see if we could hear them and then creep back and report that they were there. There was no question of making an attack, or anything like that. It seemed like hours before there was a pause in the terrible noise and, when it came, lying there right under the German wire, we could hear them moving about, even talking. That was all we had to know, so I signalled to my nearest man to pass the word to retire. We crept back the way we’d come, keeping low and as quiet as we could. When we were just a few yards from our own position – which was just linked up shell-holes with a few sandbags here and there as a kind of parapet – one of the men jumped up to dash the last few yards to his own shell-hole. At that very moment, there was a break in the clouds and a blink of moon came out. The Jerries must have been suspicious that something was up and looking out for any movement because, instantly, a machine-gun opened fire and the man fell. We got back into the trench, reported to our Bombing Officer and then, as I looked around the party, I realized that we’d lost Bobby Pearce.
Two of us crawled over the parapet, back to where we had seen the body fall and dragged him in. Bobby was completely dead. A bullet had struck him at the back of the head and the whole top of it had gone. He had been my father figure – a much older man than me, who really had looked after me like a father although I was his Section NCO. I felt really terrible.
Before it got light we buried him just a few yards away and stuck a rifle in the ground, bayonet downwards, to mark the spot. The shelling had started up again and, when we went across the following morning to attack Hop and Ale Alley, I noticed that the place where the grave had been was one enormous shell-hole.
Dawn broke shortly after the Bombers had scraped between the tree stumps and buried Bobby in the shallow grave, the rain went off and later in the morning a watery sun did its best to dry out the soldiers bivouacking on the hillsides, waiting for the move. It was 14 September and the wait was almost over. They were issued with bombs and extra ammunition, gathered their kit together, enjoyed a last hot meal and prepared to move up the line. Mail had come up for the New Zealanders and Harry Baverstock was suffering from an embarrassment of riches. He received an accumulated batch of more than twenty letters and no less than four parcels. There were four tins of pipe tobacco, four tins of condensed milk, a mountain of chocolate, a pile of books, a three-month supply of razor blades, sweets, soap, and enough home-knitted woollen goods to start a respectable small business. The best he could do was to put some sweets and chocolate in his pocket, shove a useful looking woollen cap into his light haversack, and stuff the rest of the largesse, as best he could, into his already bulging pack before leaving it, as instructed, at the Battalion dump. He never saw it again.
Shortly after seven o’clock, when the Brigade marched off in the gathering dusk, there was a lull in the shelling. At a quarter to eight, as they were moving past the rubble of Mametz village, the guns opened up behind them in such an intensity of fire that the ears of every man rang. The road to Mametz Wood flashed in the necklace of light that ribboned into the distance from Death Valley just below, where the guns, standing wheel to wheel, were pouring fire towards the German lines. It was the beginning of the great bombardment that was paving the way for tanks, infantry and cavalry. Together, in the morning, they would make the breakthrough.
As the New Zealanders struck across country to their assembly position in the wood, they could see the gunners, working flat out. It was a chilly evening but, sweating with their labour, many had discarded tunics and shirts as well. They looked like demons, bare torsos glowing red as the shells left the muzzles and disappearing into the shadows as the guns recoiled. It seemed to the New Zealanders, half-deafened by the noise, half-suffocated by the fumes, half-mesmerized by the sight, that they were passing through hell itself.
In the evil depths of Mametz Wood Bav, Kip and Gee settled down to pass the night in an old German dugout. The luck of the draw had dictated that their half of the New Zealand Brigade should remain in reserve. The others, who would go across in the morning with the first wave, moved on up the line and into the trenches to the left of Delville Wood. They were facing the Switch Line. It had been the objective of the 7th Rifle Brigade when Ted Gale had gone over the top more than three weeks before and they were back again, for the renewal of the attack. This time they were in Delville Wood itself and Ted Gale was having an unpleasant time for he had mislaid most of his platoon. They were part of the draft of two hundred new men sent to make up the Battalion after the slaughter of Orchard Trench. It was their first time in the line. In the gruesome depths of Delville Wood, with its scattered dead, the remnants of mangled trees clawing grotesquely in the moonlight, the screaming shells, the all-pervading stench, the sickening dread of tomorrow’s dawn, it would not have astonished Gale if they had panicked and run. But eventually he rounded them up. They had gone souveniring. Between them they had gathered a fine collection of German revolvers, buttons and badges and a fortunate few, scouring through the ghoulish litter of corpses, had been rewarded with the most prized of trophies – a German helmet.
Unabashed by Gale’s fury as he hounded them into the shell-holes where the Battalion was waiting for the jump-off, they were passing them round for less-fortunate scavengers to admire.
Chapter 21
After the early morning mist had cleared it was good flying weather, clear and cold in the upper air where the wind, blowing straight from the north, whistled and twanged through the wires of the aeroplanes, toy-like in the sky, and straight into the goggled faces of the men peering anxiously over the sides of the open cockpits. The goggles were a distinct impediment to observation, for they were flying high above the battle. To venture lower would be to risk a nasty encounter with one of the high-trajectory shells that filled the sky, tearing through it with the speed and sound of an express train. Even the most prudent of pilots could not escape the heart-bumping moments when his eggshell aircraft, swooping down for a closer look, sank, yawing in a rush of turbulence as a ‘heavy’ passed close beneath its belly, ripping the air apart and leaving a vacuum in its wake. The thrumming of the wind, the howling high-flying shells, the clatter of the aeroplane’s own engine shut out the uproar of the battle on the ground below where harmless puffs of smoke flagged the progress of the bombardment.
Between the criss-crossing maze of trenches that divided the grey morass into a jigsaw of crazy pieces, matchstick men bobbed and scurried like ants through the haze of the battle and a million specks of light, a million split-second flashes of fire, flickered in the mist like the shimmering of a host of fireflies. It looked from the air just as such actions had looked a thousand times before. And just as they had done a thousand times before – or so it seemed to them – Corps Commanders sweated with the strain of waiting for the wireless message that would bring the hoped-for news of progress or weary tidings of failure.
The troops went over the top at twenty past six in the morning and two nerve-racking hours later a message was wirelessed from the aircraft observing for 3rd Corps. It was worth waiting for.
TANK SEEN IN MAIN STREET OF FLERS GOING ON WITH L
ARGE NUMBERS OF TROOPS FOLLOWING IT.
It was the best news of the whole battle. It was more. It was the best news of the entire war.
In the euphoria of the moment it hardly mattered to General Pulteney at 3rd Corps Headquarters that on his own front of Martinpuich and High Wood things were not going quite so spectacularly well, that it was 15th Corps on their left which had made the breakthrough and that it was to 15th Corps Headquarters that the message should have gone. What did matter was that in a single leap the Army was in Flers. Two miles beyond High Wood. Two miles beyond Delville.
General Pulteney passed the signal on to 3rd Corps who flashed it on to 4th Army Headquarters at Querrieu. By ten-fifteen it had reached the delighted ears of Sir Douglas Haig who gave permission for the signal to be passed verbatim to the Press. By early evening it had reached London. The presses in Fleet Street began to roll and before ten o’clock late editions of the evening newspapers were on sale with the glorious news blazoned in banner headlines.
A TANK IS DRIVING DOWN THE MAIN STREET OF FLERS WITH THE BRITISH ARMY CHEERING BEHIND
Someone along the way had taken the trouble to polish the prose a little. It was only a slight and, under the circumstances, a very human exaggeration. For once it was good news. But it was not quite as good as it seemed.
Only twenty-five tanks of the forty-two had succeeded in going forward from the startlines and, of those twenty-five, the hulks of seventeen were lying destroyed, damaged, broken down or irretrievably ditched on the battlefield. The performance of the tanks had been disappointing but their effect had been enormous. They had terrorized the Germans. More important, they had put heart into the infantry and, by the very fact of their presence, propelled the troops forward with such a thrust of optimism that they had felt themselves to be invincible. It was their morale that had broken the line and it had started to rise on the eve of the battle with their first sight of the tanks.
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