SOMME

by Lyn Macdonald

  I’d had a long time in the line with just a few days out and my nerves weren’t too good. I never felt so alone in my life sitting in that dim dugout and the shells falling all round and the sky flashing and those five gas cylinders just outside the door. By and by I heard a voice and it seemed to be coming from a long way away. It was calling my name – ‘George Worsley’. Then a long pause, and then, ‘George Worsley. George Worsley.’ I was absolutely terrified. I was too terrified to answer. I thought I was having a hallucination. So I kept mum. Next day, when the Brigade moved back to the guns, I discovered that it was one of the chaps who’d been trying to find me. They’d sent him back up with a message. He didn’t know which dugout I was in so he was going along the lot, dodging the shells and calling my name all over the place. Down in the dugout, his voice sounded so faint and ghostly that I thought my hour had come!

  October stormed towards the end of the month. On days when the rain moved out, winter moved in. Hard night frosts laid a crackle of ice across the swamps and in the morning the troops pitched forward to the attack through frozen mud. The fighting went on. The redoubts fell. The Germans were driven from the crest of Thiepval Ridge. Le Sars was captured.

  The month ended in a spate of torrential downpours and thunderstorms so violent that they even out-thundered the guns.

  Arthur Agius trudged thankfully out of the line, hitched a lift to Amiens and caught the leave train from the railhead to Boulogne. It was a stormy crossing, but the sun shone on his wedding day, though a blustery wind swept the bride’s veil into a tangle that was hard to undo. Agius looked exceedingly smart in a dapper new uniform specially purchased for the occasion. Everyone agreed that it was a wonderful wedding. There was time for a three-day honeymoon in Eastbourne before the bridegroom returned to France to rejoin his Battalion in the trackless swamps in front of Gueudecourt and Lesboeufs, facing the Germans on the Transloy ridges across the valley.

  Wallowing in the mud of the front line Fritz was as cold, as miserable, as muddy and despairing as any Tommy. But he suffered less from shortage of ammunition; he was better provisioned; his supplies had a better chance of getting through. Unlike their unfortunate counterparts, German soldiers were not obliged to struggle over six exhausting miles of battered desolation to reach the firing line. There was shelter close behind them. There were usable roads that ran right up to communication trenches, and a network of light-gauge railways to ease the transport of troops and supplies.

  But Sir Douglas Haig was right in deducing that the Germans were shaken by the wearing fighting of the past months. He was right in his belief that they were over-stretched and that they were rethinking their position – but they were not thinking of surrender. They were planning to shorten their line.

  Three days before the fall of Thiepval, with infinite secrecy, the Germans had put their plans in hand, and miles behind the front, from Arras to the Somme, even as the British Command was planning the next series of attacks that would bring them closer to Bapaume, German engineers were reconnoitring fresh ground and plotting positions of tactical advantage. Early in November they began to draw up blueprints for a new line of defence – a line so strong, so formidable and so impregnable that, by comparison, their citadel on the Somme had been as fragile as a child’s toy fort. In honour of the Wagnerian hero of German victories they code-named it ‘The Siegfried Line’. When it was completed they would retire to it. For the winter they would stand where they were, ready to do battle if the British chose to fight the German Army as well as the elements. In the spring, if need be, they could toss them Bapaume, as they might toss a bone to a snarling dog.

  Chapter 24

  It was 11 November and the boys of the 13th Battalion, The Rifle Brigade, were back on the Somme and none too pleased to exchange the ‘cushy’ trenches at Calonne for the bleak chill of canvas huts in the muddy environs of Puchevillers. At Calonne the British line ran through the abandoned houses of the village and, although they were something of a shambles, the cellars at least were habitable. Furnished with household goods salvaged from the wreckage of the upper storeys, they made luxurious dugouts. In one section of the line, a soldier could literally step down from the firestep into a front parlour, complete with sofa, table and chairs, and Joe Hoyles, sent with four others to man an observation post, was delighted to find that some previous occupant had had the foresight to purloin real beds to furnish the cellar beneath it. It was sufficient of an event to warrant a place in his diary: ‘I’ve had the pleasure of laying on something soft for the first time out here!’

  By contrast Puchevillers was unanimously voted the most filthy and desolate spot in France, and there they had spent a miserable week, in miserable weather, rehearsing yet again for battle, and that afternoon they had lost the Colonel. Prideaux-Brune had been playing full-back for the Officers against the Other Ranks in a game of rugby organized ‘to keep the lads amused’ when he was tackled and brought down by Corporal Percy Eaton. It was generally felt that Eaton might have chosen a more convenient time than the eve of a battle to break the Commanding Officer’s collar bone.

  Joe Hoyles, Tommy Bennett and two other sergeants had pulled rank and had succeeded in getting a canvas hut to themselves. It was freezing cold but, with the help of a little rum purloined from the communal jar, they were managing to pass the evening enjoyably. They fancied themselves as singers and Tommy Bennett of the Welsh contingent undeniably had a fine tenor voice. He sang the harmony for an old favourite.

  The Line at the end of the fighting in November

  Just a song at twilight when the lights are low

  And the flickering shadows softly come and go.

  Though your hearts be weary, sad the day and long,

  Still to us at twilight comes love’s old song,

  Comes love’s old, sweet song.

  Under the circumstances, the choice was, to say the least, unusual. But who cared?

  The 13th Battalion was temporarily attached to the 63rd Division, now encamped in similarly nasty conditions in the shelter of the Mesnil Ridge as they waited to move up the line. It was more than two years since they had fought at Antwerp in a vain attempt to staunch the flow of the German Army through Belgium; they had spent most of 1915 fighting the Turks in Gallipoli and for eight months now they had been in action in France. In spite of this imposing military record, the men of the 63rd Division did not regard themselves as soldiers. Their Division was the Royal Naval Division and no amount of rifle toting, nor even the indignity of the khaki uniforms and tin hats which the Army now insisted on their wearing, would make them into anything but sailors. Those officers who had gone forward to reconnoitre up the flooded valley of the Ancre saw the irony behind the Army’s decision to put the Naval Division in to attack it. It was unfortunate that they had not gone so far as to supply them with boats.

  They were a mixed bunch of pre-war naval reservists from seaports round the coast of Britain who had been mildly surprised, when King and Country called them up before even the Army was mobilized, that the mighty British Navy had insufficient ships for them to man and that they had been transmogrified into land-lubber forces of the British Army instead. But God help the British Army if it tried to deprive them of their jealously guarded naval traditions. God help the War Office pundit who suggested changing commanders into colonels, petty officers into sergeants, able seamen into privates, or who suggested, in order to fit in with the Army’s arithmetical calculations, that battalions should give up such ringing titles as Howe, Hood, Drake, Nelson, Anson, in exchange for mere numbers. Altogether the Royal Naval Division considered itself to be something special and a cut above mere soldiers with their kowtowing khaki discipline. Their own disciplinary structure, they were happy to say, was as free and easy as their esprit de corps was strong. They had recently fallen foul of their new Divisional General who had been sent to replace their own Commander, General Paris, whose leg had been severed by a shell. General Paris was of the well-publicized opinion
that ‘man for man and officer for officer the Naval Division is incomparably better than nine-tenths of the divisions in France’. His successor, none other than General Shute, did not share this opinion and the antipathy was mutual. The qualities of discipline and leadership, which had so excited Alex Paterson’s admiration when he had guided the General into No Man’s Land in front of Guillemont, were not appreciated by the Royal Naval Division.

  Sub-Lieutenant Jeremy Bentham, Hood Btn., Royal Naval Division

  General Shute had no time for the Royal Naval Division and we had no time for him. The first thing he did was to insist that all NCOs should wear army rank on one sleeve as well as their naval rank on the other. They loathed that!

  Another bee in his bonnet was Salvage. Actually that’s what got Hall out of trouble. This chap had gone into a dugout and left his rifle leaning against the wall. Naturally his rifle was absolutely filthy, because we didn’t go in a great deal for spit and polish in our Division. Along came Shute and spotted this dirty old rifle and picked it up, bellowing what a disgrace it was and demanding to know who it belonged to. Of course it was Hall’s! But he had great presence of mind and, knowing how keen Shute was about salvage, he said, quick as a flash, that it was one he had picked up in No Man’s Land the night before! Shute was pleased as punch and said, ‘Well done!’ We enjoyed a good laugh over that.

  Sub-Lieutenant William Marlow, MC (RNVR), Howe Btn., Royal Naval Division

  Shute was a proper Army bloke. He never really liked this naval tradition stuff and when he took over he came and inspected us. We’d only just gone into the line in the Souchez Sector and we’d taken it over from the Portuguese. Of course, it was in a bloody mess, but we hadn’t had time to clear it up or anything. Well, Shute was furious. He went back and wrote an absolute stinker about the disgusting state of our trenches and really created a most awful fuss. Alan Herbert was an officer in the Royal Naval Division – A. P. Herbert, who later became very well known as a writer. He wrote a poem about this episode, well it was a song really, and it started off in the wardroom and then it went right down through all the ranks. It was absolutely filthy!

  The General inspecting the trenches

  exclaimed with a horrified shout,

  ‘I refuse to command a Division

  Which leaves its excreta about.’

  But nobody took any notice

  No one was prepared to refute,

  That the presence of shit was congenial

  Compared with the presence of Shute.

  And certain responsible critics

  Made haste to reply to his words

  Observing that his Staff advisers

  Consisted entirely of turds.

  For shit may be shot at odd corners

  And paper supplied there to suit,

  But a shit would be shot without mourners

  If somebody shot that shit Shute.

  That song didn’t just go through the whole of the Royal Naval Division – it went through the whole of the Army!

  But it was the sailors who sang it with particular relish. They sang it to the tune of Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket and thought it the last word in wit. Small groups of them were singing it now, under their breath, in defiance of the rule of silence as they made their way by various routes across the face of the Mesnil Ridge to assemble behind the line. The assaulting Battalions of the Division had been split up into small parties. Although the Thiepval Ridge, rearing up across the valley, was now in British hands, it was bright moonlight and who knew what unfriendly eyes were marking their passage?

  Across the valley, across the heights beyond, across the Albert–Bapaume road where the 50th Division was in the line, Lieutenant Cecil Slack was far from happy about the full moon. Earlier in the day he had received an order which was unequivocal and also, in his opinion, bordered on insanity.

  SECRET

  TO: O.C. ‘C’ COMPANY

  A series of strongposts is to be formed in advance (75 yards) of our front line tonight. Your Company will have to furnish them and make them. I shall require four posts of an Officer (or good N.C.O.) and 12 men each to go forward at dusk and dig themselves into strongposts by improving shell holes. These posts will work under your supervision and will be provided with a day’s rations before dawn.

  You had better come and see me at 3 p.m. re above.

  W. T. W.

  Slack was only too pleased to visit the Commanding Officer in his dugout. He knew that the order had come from Brigade. He also knew that it was suicide, and he challenged the Colonel accordingly.

  ‘Does the General realize that there will be a full moon tonight, sir?’

  There was a long pause before the Colonel replied. Then he looked Slack straight in the eye.

  ‘The General is a very able soldier.’

  Captain C. S. Slack, MC, 1st/4th Btn., East Yorkshire Regiment, 150th Brigade, 50th Division

  A lot of these brainwaves were from people who didn’t know what it was like to be in No Man’s Land in broad daylight – and broad moonlight is as good as broad daylight. The idea was that, if the Germans made an attack – and they were expecting them to make an attack – there would be a post here, and a post there, to break it up. The Germans were supposed not to know that those four posts were there but you can see 150 yards in broad moonlight and it was a beautifully clear night. You could see everything. You could see your breath going up in front of you in steam. To go out in those conditions was utter suicide, but the General had ordered it, so that was that.

  I picked up my first party. As soon as we got out through our own wire the bullets came. A man was killed next to me. We crawled from shell-hole to shell-hole and somehow or other we got to what I thought was a suitable shell-hole to be strengthened. I left my first party there in charge of a corporal and came back to take another party out. I was supposed to take them out seventy yards – and that would be about halfway across No Man’s Land – but I didn’t. I took them out maybe sixty yards. Then I went back and took the third party out and I had decided by then that I wasn’t going to take them out so far. Another man was killed and all the time bullets were crashing round us. The Germans could see us as plain as daylight! Why more of us weren’t hit I don’t know, because we were being shot at all the time.

  Another man was killed at the third post. I crawled back for the fourth party and, this time, I went out twenty yards and stopped.

  They were in the line in front of the village of le Sars. It was a month since it had been captured but they had got no further. Just beyond the village the road to Bapaume ran down a gentle slope and, at the foot, where the land flattened out, a long mound of white chalk glistened in the moonlight, dominating the countryside like some cold evil eye. It was not surprising that the soldiers holding the line in front of le Sars were edgy, for the Germans had made a strongpoint of the Butte de Warlencourt. From its rearward slope it looked across to Eaucourt-l’Abbaye – once a farm on the site of an old abbey, now an outpost in the wasteland, captured at the cost of many lives. The Butte also overlooked the country road that once had ambled past on its way to Gueudecourt. It was held now by the Australians, back in the line and fighting for the Maze, the Gird lines, Grassy Lane. Despite their legendary toughness, the Aussies were suffering more acutely than anyone else from the damp and the mud and the chill of the bitter weather.

  But the weather had changed with the full moon and, just as the Army Commanders had hoped, it had changed for the better. General Gough’s Reserve Army – which, since 30 October, had been redesignated The Fifth Army – stood poised, ready for a battle which, with the season so far advanced, the Germans would scarcely be expecting. On 21 October the cavalry had moved back to winter billets. Shivering in the front line the infantry wished that they could do the same.

  The heights of the Thiepval Ridge had been captured but deep in the sharp-cut valley, protected by their tenure of the high land across the river, the Germans still clung fast to St Pierre Divio
n and Grandcourt on its banks. They still held Beaucourt. They still held Beaumont Hamel and they still held Serre. They had settled down for the winter. One short sharp surprise knock now, when it was least expected, might easily accomplish great things.

  Sir Douglas Haig had another reason for wishing to gamble on a late offensive. He had made it clear to General Gough, through his Chief of Staff, General Kiggell, that it should be mounted entirely at the General’s own discretion; that, if the weather and conditions weighed unfavourably against the likelihood of success, he need not commit his Army and he was perfectly entitled to cancel the operation. But the weather had cleared up. It had not rained since the 8th. The 12th November dawned unseasonably bright and sunny. It was a perfect autumn day. The air was clear and the cold changed from bone-stiffening chill to a brisk, invigorating freshness that lifted the spirits. It had also, to some extent, dried out the ground. It was a fine day for a ride but the necessity for speedy action forced General Haig to travel by motor car to General Gough’s headquarters at Toutencourt. He was anxious to have a private word.

  The Commander-in-Chief did not retract the message which his Chief of Staff had passed to General Gough the previous day. General Gough still had a free hand. The final decision was still his. But Haig made it quite clear that the capture of Beaumont Hamel would be useful to him. Three days hence, on 15 November, he would be conferring at Chantilly with the High Command of the French Army, and at that meeting future strategy would be decided. The French were cock-a-hoop. At long last the tide had turned at Verdun. On 24 October the French Army had recaptured its mighty forts and, if the Germans were not precisely on the run, the initiative had passed decisively to the French. But they could not afford to relax. The enemy must be kept occupied here in the west to prevent him from switching any of his manpower to reinforce his position at Verdun and consequently Marshal Joffre was pressing the British to continue their attacks.