But Haig was worried about his own manpower. The main purpose of the Chantilly Conference was to agree on joint plans for a Spring Offensive. The British Army had informed the Government that it would require 350,000 men as reinforcements. Even if they got them all (which, on past performance, seemed unlikely) Haig was uneasy and doubtful if such a number of new recruits could be trained to full fighting-pitch before he was forced to commit them alongside the French in the spring.
He chatted about these matters to General Gough. It was obvious to both men that Beaumont Hamel, if it could be easily captured, would serve to keep the French quiet and would undoubtedly act in the British interest at the Chantilly Conference. One daring thrust, now that the weather was on their side, might achieve much.
It was a fine night, cloudless and frosty as the troops assembled for the assault. Between Serre and the Ancre they were waiting in precisely the same positions as on the eve of 1 July. Only the season had changed. Two thousand men of the Royal Naval Division were lying on the open ground in the trenches and ruins of the village of Hamel where Joe Murray’s billet for the night was a groove of mud between two flooded shell-holes. The water quivered slightly with the vibration of the bombardment and, when it momentarily paused, they could hear steady firing from the German line, like the crackle of twigs in a bonfire, and the fire-cracking explosions of hand-grenades thrown haphazardly into the waterlogged mud in front of their wire. The Germans were uneasy. A major attack at this time of year seemed out of the question but, nevertheless, they had no doubt that something was afoot. The troops, lying out in the dank chill of the November night, dared not reply for fear of bringing the full force of the German artillery down on their tight-packed position.
The Hood Battalion was right down in the valley of the River Ancre – now less of a river than a lake of mud that seeped across the low ground to the foot of Thiepval ridge. Towards midnight haze gathered in the valley and thickened as it spread towards the slopes. The chill deepened. Soon the troops waiting for the assault were enveloped in rolling mist. In Hood Battalion, the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant-Commander Freyberg, taking advantage of its concealing folds, began to move among the lines of his battalion, stopping with a word of encouragement whenever a muffled cough suggested that men were awake. Spirits were not high. The previous evening the officers of B Company had organized a macabre sweepstake. They each wrote a personal cheque for five pounds payable ‘to Bearer’ and left them, with their kit, in charge of the Quartermaster. Those who survived tomorrow would cash the cheques of those who did not, and share the jackpot.
The 3rd Division was waiting to attack at Serre just as the Pals had waited four months and a half before. The line of attack would be the same, but there were two differences. This time the troops would have twice the number of guns to support them; and this time the ground was a quagmire of oozing mud that stretched back beyond the gun lines one thousand yards behind. The guns had been heaved up on to solid platforms of pit props to keep them from sinking into the swamp and, in the line, the troops crouched and shivered and tried to sleep to the murmur and thud of the pumps that were keeping the trenches comparatively clear of water.
In the White City in front of Beaumont Hamel they had been double-pumping for weeks now to keep the tunnels and trenches reasonably dry. The old tunnels had been refurbished; new ones had been dug; another mine had been laid and they would explode it at Zero under the old crater on the Hawthorn Ridge, for the Germans had re-fortified the redoubt that protected Beaumont Hamel in the cleft of the valley behind. Beaumont Hamel was the main objective – the prize of the battle, and the 51st Highland Division was ordered to take it. They were known to be ‘bonny fighters’. They frequently practised by fighting each other. No one recalled the origins of the feud between the 6th and the 8th Battalions of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders but, after several estaminets had been wrecked in the course of wild rumpuses for which the Army was obliged to foot the bill, it had been generally recognized that, when the Division was out at rest, those in charge of the billeting arrangements of the three Brigades would be well advised to make sure that the 6th and the 8th Argylls were separated by a considerable distance. The 8th Argylls, who came from Argyllshire itself, were largely Gaelic speaking, and sneered at the idea that the 6th, who hailed from Paisley in Renfrewshire, should pass as Highlanders at all. Furthermore, the 8th Argylls considered the 6th to be undeservedly spoilt. Bell’s, a local tobacco company, sent out a weekly present of twenty cigarettes per man, and they were vastly superior to the ration of issue cigarettes which came the way of the 8th Argylls. Local football clubs also sent cigarettes and supplied sports kit and equipment. The 6th Argylls never lacked whisky and the Paisley thread manufacturers, J. & P. Coates, who regarded the Battalion as their own, plied the men with comforts. The last straw was when the same firm, in the kindness of its heart, presented every officer with a breast-plate and every man with a heart-shaped mirror of polished steel to place in his breast-pocket as insurance against German bullets. The fact that the 8th Argylls taunted the 6th in Gaelic simply added fuel to the fire. None of the Paisley boys spoke a word of anything but English, but they found no difficulty in understanding the insulting tone of the Highlanders’ remarks.
Matters had improved very slightly after the 6th Argylls came out of the Labyrinth in front of Arras with so many casualties that they were reinforced mainly by Englishmen, made into a Pioneer Battalion and transferred to another Division. Although Sergeant ‘Wullie’ Stevenson was an original member of the 6th Argylls (and of the Auldhouse football team which had joined up en masse), as a machine-gunner he had not suffered the indignity of being reduced with the rest of the Battalion to navvying. Now, in preparation for the battle, he checked and rechecked the four guns of his section and filled his water-bottle with rum against the exigencies of the day ahead. His orders were to make straight for Y Ravine.
The fog thickened. At 5.45 when the bombardment crashed out it was still black night. In order to keep the Germans guessing precisely where the attack would come, the guns opened up from Serre in the north to Lesboeufs in the south and the soldiers holding the muddy draggle of line in front of Lesboeufs and Gueudecourt stood up and cheered as the shells screamed over their heads to crash on the Transloy ridges, in an excess of pleasure that, for once, someone else was going over the top. Astride the Ancre, up the Beaumont Hamel valley, into the slough in front of Serre, the 5th Army went forward through thick swirling fog and were swallowed up.
Sergeant William Stevenson, DCM, MM, No. 3113, 6th Btn., Argyll & Sutherland Hdrs., 51st (Highland) Division
We came straight out of the White City. They put us in the tunnel the night before and in the morning they blew the top off it and the infantry went straight over. The machine-gunners and trench-mortar parties were the last to get out – right near the German lines. The bodies of our boys who’d gone over on – July were still lying there between the lines and the stink would have knocked you down. You can believe me or believe me not, but we got right into the German trenches – and there was nobody there! They were all still in their dugouts, because we shelled and knocked hell out of each other every morning and night with shellfire anyway, and they just thought it was the usual thing and never even bothered to get out of their shelters. They never expected an attack in that weather.
I thought the place was very quiet and I said to Lance-Corporal Hopkins – he was an English boy, a Cockney – I said, ‘Come on, Hoppy. You come on with me here. I don’t like this!’ We went away along the trench, a great wide trench and, as we went along, I heard voices and we listened and Hoppy says, ‘They’re Germans! I’ll tell them to come up.’ Well it took a bit of coaxing! They were down in the dugout and there were about twenty to thirty steps, but up they came eventually and all the boys gathered round to see what was going on. We took seventeen prisoners! I sent my batman, wee Hope, an Edinburgh fellow, away back with them to Headquarters. ‘March the whole lot back,’ I s
aid to him. Lance-Corporal Robertson and myself went in the dugout and, the silliest thing was that there were one or two openings to it. The Germans could easily have got out of them.
We went along and searched and we got all their ammunition and their rifles and revolvers and other souvenirs (later we sold them to the transport boys and the ASC boys at the back!) and then we went up to the top of the hill and Y Ravine was down in front of us. They had this tunnel right along it and there was even electric light in the damned place. There were wire beds for the men to sleep in and everything you could think of. They had machine-gun emplacements and they had concrete emplacements and the tunnel was all linked up to them. No wonder our boys couldn’t get into the front-line trenches in July! Beaumont Hamel was really a fortified place and they just couldn’t take it.
I believe in other sectors they got it pretty badly but where we were our boys just went sailing through and we followed.
Stevenson was right in thinking that in other sectors things had not gone so well. On the left of Beaumont Hamel another battalion of Argylls lost half their force in their advance towards the same orchards, against the same machine-guns which had mown down the Hampshires on 1 July. On the right, the Seaforths floundered and groped through the fog searching for gaps in the wire. In front of Serre the infantry waded through mud, so deep, so heavy, so clinging that more than half of them were bogged down before they had got halfway to the German trenches. Only small groups of exhausted men ever succeeded in reaching them and, when they did, their rifles were so useless, so clogged with mud, that they were easy prey.
Slogging up the river valley, splaying out over the slopes of the Beaumont Hamel spur, Hood and Hawke Battalions, leading the advance of the Royal Naval Division, had also run into trouble. To be more precise they had run past it. Just over the brow, the Germans had well-concealed strongpoints and unsuspected defensive positions and they were not marked on the trench maps for the very good reason that no one knew they were there.
Able Bodied Seaman Joseph Murray, No. TZ.276, Hood Btn., 63rd (Royal Naval) Division
… It was very misty, a really wet mist. It wasn’t a Scotch mist, it was a double Scotch mist, nasty, wet and claggy. As soon as the barrage opened the sky turned red – just like the ironworks at home across the Derwent valley. When they were drawing their furnaces you’d get a red glow, and that was the picture I saw looking back over the lines at our own barrage. The whole sky was lit up and you could feel the shells. You could actually feel the damned things going over your head like a wind in the fog.
There were twelve or thirteen rows of barbed wire in front of the first trench and when the bombardment goes into that, it’s supposed to cut it, but it doesn’t destroy the wire, it builds it into a bloody heap with gaps in it here and there and, when the enemy’s alive and awake to the idea that you’re coming, they’ve got their machine-guns trained on these gaps – therefore you get slaughtered. But we got through it – some of us anyhow! There didn’t seem to be many of our chaps about as we pressed forward and entered his second line. The Drakes and the Nelsons got all mixed up and, on our left, they were all banging and crashing about and there was terrible fire coming from this redoubt. It was a square of trenches lined with men manning machine-guns – probably a hundred men in it – and it wasn’t even touched by the artillery. How they missed that, Lord only knows! We had terrible casualties. When we got to the second line there were hardly any of us about. We were supposed to rest there for forty minutes and the next lot were supposed to go through us and take the Green Line – which was the station road. But they’d had such casualties that hardly any of them turned up, so instead of us resting there, we had to go on and we had to capture the Green Line. It was Freyberg who got us together and led us on, and there were all too few of us, believe me. But we went on and we captured the Green Line although there was nobody on our left at all by then…
Sub-Lieutenant Jeremy Bentham, B Coy., Hood Btn., 63rd (Royal Naval) Division
I had two men with me, two runners to take messages back to Battalion HQ, and my Petty Officer who was to take command of my platoon if I fell. We advanced quite steadily and went on to the Jerry front line and I found myself firing my revolver at anyone I saw emerging from the dugouts. There were plenty of them coming out and running! Unfortunately our 18-pounder guns had got so hot that their shells started falling short and one exploded quite near. The next thing I knew was that I was on the ground with all the chaps who were with me. I had been hit in my left thigh and couldn’t walk or even hop. So there we lay while other men jumped over us on their way to catch up with the chaps who were still going forward. I did my best to try and bandage my leg – it was bleeding profusely – and the other men were doing the same, except for one who’d been killed. There was nothing I could do but wait for our surgeon, McCracken. He came along eventually and he bandaged us up as best he could under this terrible shellfire. He was laughing. I’ll always remember him laughing as he poured iodine into my wound. ‘This will stop you giggling in church!’ he said. We settled down to wait for the stretcher-bearers but it was a long time before they came. We were there all day. There were hundreds of us lying there wounded.
Sub-Lieutenant William Marlow, MC, Howe Btn., 63rd (Royal Naval) Division
I hadn’t been going half an hour when I was hit in the right wrist. It was my batman who saved me – Molly Milburn. His nickname was Molly. The trouble was that my wound had severed the main artery and I could easily have bled to death. Well, I don’t even know how little Molly found me in the fog, but he did and he put a tourniquet on and stopped the flowing of the blood. I was right out for the count. Then he left me and had to go on, naturally. He was a good soldier.
The next thing I knew was that there was a whole load of German prisoners being brought down with two or three blokes guarding them and the Battalion had struck unlucky because we’d struck strongposts that the guns hadn’t obliterated. As these prisoners were coming back they were actually being picked off by chaps firing from these strongposts. Germans! They were probably going for the half-a-dozen British who were guarding them, walking on the outside of the lines of prisoners and I remember shouting at them, ‘You bloody fools! Get inside of them!’ Simple, isn’t it? That’s what they did – went in the middle of the prisoners and, of course, the Jerries stopped firing. They picked me up on the way past and carried me back the same way – surrounded by German prisoners. When they dumped me at the aid post, there were scores of blokes in there all with terrible wounds, and the quack, old Dr McCracken, said to me, ‘Do you think you can make your own way down the line?’ I said, ‘Too bloody true I can!’ So off I went again with the Jerry prisoners and they helped me down to the field dressing station and from there I went to the casualty clearing station.
Bombardier William J. Muir, No. 751367, D 317 Bty., 63rd (Royal Naval) Division Field Artillery
Our gun positions were in Aveluy Wood and I had my signal lines running down this steep communication trench they called Jacob’s Ladder. I had to send up a signaller, name of Waugh, not a lot of brains but a big strapping lad, and he had to go up and extend the line as we went forward and he needed two spools of wire of a hundred yards each. I said, ‘Look here, two spools are a bit hefty for you to carry up there on your own.’ So I got hold of this other chap, Ernest Reevie, a pal of mine from South Shields (we called him Paddy) to go with him. Eighteen-pounder shells come in a case of four with a steel rod going through the middle to keep them in place, so I got hold of two of these rods and put the two reels on them so they could carry them on their shoulders and sent them off up this road on the north side of the Ancre towards where the Division was attacking. Well, of course we didn’t know really what was happening up front, and Waugh and Paddy had gone no distance when suddenly they saw hordes and hordes of Germans coming down the road. There were no guards with them, and the lads were quite unarmed, except for these steel rods and two reels of wire. They didn’t think they could fi
ght hundreds of Germans with steel rods and they didn’t stop to notice that the Germans were unarmed as well! Well, they were just about to dive into a dugout at the side of the road and hope for the best when one of the Germans shouted at them and managed to make himself understood. He wanted to know the way to the prisoners’ cage! So Paddy and Waugh just pointed to the rear, and very thankful they were when the Jerries went straight on and didn’t bother them.
They must have been about the first lot to be captured, but we saw hundreds that day coming past our positions and we didn’t see a single guard with them! I noticed that happening more than once, though. You start a line of prisoners and they all go marching down following each other. The guards can’t catch up with them half the time!
By nine o’clock when the fragments of the Royal Naval Division had fought through to the third German line they estimated with amazement, and with a fair degree of accuracy, that the prisoners outnumbered the attackers.
As soon as the line gave way on the Hawthorn Ridge and in front of Beaumont Hamel itself, the geographical accident which had guaranteed its safety now set the seal on its defeat, and the Germans were forced back between the high banks of the valley behind the village. There was nowhere else for them to go. They were waiting there in thousands before the astonished eyes of Lieutenant-Commander Freyberg as he breasted the hill at the head of his tiny force. It was an encouraging sight.
After that it was only a matter of time. By four o’lock the Scots were well established in Beaumont Hamel. They had captured two Battalion Headquarters and, in addition to quantities of maps and papers which British Intelligence would doubtless be glad to receive, they were delighted to find a good supply of canteen stores, a large stock of bottled mineral water and a handsome piano. They also found several sacks of mail from Germany and spared a sympathetic thought for Jerry, trudging towards the Prisoner-of-War cages without the consolation of letters from home.
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