It is difficult to rediscover a battalion’s psychology at any given time, but so far as evidence goes they had not too black doubts as to the upshot of the campaign, though every platoon kept its loud-voiced pessimists who foretold that they would take root in the trenches for evermore and christened the R.O.D. locomotives “Roll on Duration!”
On the 1st February (1917) in “cold bright weather with snow on the ground,” the 1st Brigade were once again in Divisonal Reserve near Carnoy, ready to relieve the 3rd Coldstream near Rancourt on the recently taken-over French sector, in trenches a little westerly of St. Pierre Vaast Wood which is under Sailly-Saillisel. In the wood itself lay a dreadful mine-crater of the old days, filled, as it seemed, with dead French Colonial troops — browned and blackened bodies, their white skulls still carrying jaunty red caps. Our wondering patrols used to look down into it sometimes of moonlight nights.
They moved out on the 2nd of February via Maricourt and Maurepas, left No. 2 Company under canvas in Maurepas Ravine, distributed the rest in shelters and dug-outs and resumed their watch. The frozen ground stopped much digging or “improvements,” and the enemy’s front line gave no trouble, but a few small shells were sent over, one of which hit 2nd Lieutenant J. Orr temporarily in command of No. 1 Company and wounded a couple of men. The rest of their turn — February 2 to 6 — was quiet, for the new-fallen snow gave away the least movement on either side. While they crouched over their braziers and watched each other, the operations round Serre and at the nose of the Arras–Le Transloy salient, began again as the earth’s crust hardened. The Sixty-third Division hammered its way for a day and a night up the southern slopes of Serre, and our guns were threatening the line of enemy’s trenches from Grandcourt westward. This move unkeyed the arch of his local defences at this point, and next day he evacuated Grandcourt and such of his front as lay between Grandcourt and the Stuff redoubt.
By the 7th February our troops had carried forward to midway between Beaucourt and Miraumont, and on the 10th February the Thirty-second Division took in hand the business of shifting the enemy out of what remained to him in the Beaumont Valley. Their advance brought Serre village into direct danger from our artillery, and any further move on our part up the valley of the Ancre would make Serre untenable.
On the 17th February that move was made by three Divisions (Second, Eighteenth, and Sixty-third) before dawn, through heavy mist on the edge of a thaw, and in the face of a well-contrived barrage that caught the battalions forming up. But the positions and observation-points, already gained, helped our guns to help the infantry, broke up the enemy’s counter-attacks with satisfactory losses, and, in the next few days, gave us good command over the enemy’s artillery dispositions in the valley of the Upper Ancre and a fair look into his defences at Pys and Miraumont. Then the game stood thus: If Miraumont, which lay at our mercy, were taken, Serre would go; if Serre went, Puisieux-au-Mont and Gomiecourt, the pillar of the old German western defences, would be opened too; and it was no part of the German idea to cling to untenable positions, whose loss would have to be explained at home where people were asking why victory delayed so long. Not only was the whole of Arras–Le Transloy salient shaking by now; there was the prospect of indefinite wastage to no good end all along the rest of the Somme front, and though the weather, till then, had blunted the following weight of each following blow, many considerations pointed to a temporary withdrawal of a few miles in order to advance the more irresistibly at a more fitting time. Slowly, methodically then, with careful screens of veiled machine-guns behind them, and a series of scientifically chosen artillery positions, equally capable of supporting a counter-attack, or checking and destroying any too inconvenient body of pursuers, the enemy moved back into ground not yet churned and channelled by shell or traffic, over untouched roads which he had kept in perfect order, to this very end; and left us to follow through bottomless valleys of desolation.
The frost broke on the third week of February, and the last state of the ground was worse even than it had been throughout the rainy autumn. Trenches caved in bodily; dumps sank where they were being piled; the dirt and the buttresses of overhead shelters flaked and fell away in lumps; duckboards went under by furlongs at a time; tanks were immobilised five feet deep and the very bellies of the field-guns gouged into the mud. Only our airmen could see anything beyond or outside the present extreme discomfort, but the mists that came punctually with the thaws helped to baffle even ,their eyes.
On the 24th February the enemy had evacuated his positions in front of Pys, Miraumont, and Serre; next day his first system of defence, from Gueudecourt to west of Serre, running through half-a-dozen fortified villages, was in our hands.
At the end of the month, Puisieux-au-Mont, with Gomiecourt and its defences, were occupied by us. The Germans had pulled themselves cleanly out of the worst of the salient.
By March they were back on their fortified Le Transloy–Loupart line, except that they still held the village of Irles above Miraumont, which was linked up to the Le Transloy–Loupart line by a peninsula of wired trenches. Irles was carried by the Second and Eighteenth Divisions on the 10th march.
As soon as our guns were able to concentrate on the Le Transloy–Loupart line itself, which they did the day after, the enemy, leisurely as always, released it, and fell back on and through his next line a mile or two behind — Rocquigny–Ablainzevelle — steadied his rearguards, and continued his progress towards the Hindenburg defences, withdrawing along the whole front from south of Arras to Roye. By the 17th of March word was given for a general advance of our troops in co-operation with the French.
To go back a month. Rumours of what was to be expected had cheered the camps for some time past; and just as the fall of single rocks precedes the collapse of an undermined quarry-face, so the German line had crumpled in certain spots long before their system readjusted itself throughout. Front-trenches, far removed from actual points of pressure, observed that life with them was quieter than even the state of the weather justified, and began to make investigations.
When the Battalion went up, as usual, on the 15th February to relieve the 2nd Grenadiers in the trenches a little north of Rancourt and opposite St. Pierre Vaast Wood, their casualties for the four days were but three killed and five wounded. “Practically no sniping and very occasional shelling.” They treated it lightly enough, for it was here that the sentry told the conscientious officer who had heard a shell drop near the trench: “Ah, it fell quite convenient here” — a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder, and as an afterthought — ”‘Twas a dud, though.” The ground was still hard, and, to the men’s joy, they could not dig.
Captain R. J. P. Rodakowski arrived from the base on the 18th of the month. The thaw caught them in camp at Maurepas, just as the enemy’s withdrawal got under way, and their turn in trenches from the 23rd to 26th February was marked by barrages let down on them of evenings, presumably to discourage curiosity. So they were ordered at short notice to send out a couple of officer’s patrols from their left and right companies to reconnoitre generally, and see if the enemy were falling back. The first patrol, under 2nd Lieutenant Shears, an N.C.O., three bombers, and three “bayonet-men,” spent a couple of hours among the wire, were bombed but returned unhurt. The second, also of seven men, under Lieutenant Browne, were seen by the enemy, headed back to our lines, but made a fresh outfall, which carried them to the wire where, “finding a weak spot, they cut their way through it” and won within a few yards of the enemy’s parapet when they were bombed. They used up their own supplies and came back with a good report, and four men and Lieutenant Browne wounded. On their information a raid was arranged for the next day to take over a couple of hundred yards of the enemy’s trench, but it was cancelled pending developments elsewhere. They lost two killed and thirteen men and one officer wounded in this tour, and went back to routine and “specialist” training in a camp near Billon on the last day of February.
Their domestic items for the n
ext fortnight, which, like the rest of March, was cold and stormy, run as follows: 2nd Lieutenant A. L. Bain went to the Fourteenth Corps School for a fortnight at Méaulte, which, in that weather, was no special treat; and Lieutenant E. H. Shears to Headquarters Lewis Gun School at Le Touquet, a much superior place. Lieut.-Colonel R. C. A. McCalmont left on the 3rd March to take over command of the 3rd Infantry Brigade just south of the Somme, and had a tremendous send-off from the Battalion. He was succeeded in the command by Major the Hon. H. R. Alexander, D.S.O., M.C., and Major G. E. S. Young came over from the 2nd Battalion as second in command — as it proved for all too brief a time. The specialist training continued, and “open warfare” was practised by companies. There was an irreverent camp-jest just then that whenever the enemy abandoned one quarter of a mile of trench, the five nearest British army corps forsook every other game to practise “open warfare.” The Battalion learned also attacks on triple lines of trenches, the creeping barrage being personified by their drums and those of the 2nd Coldstream. In this sort of work, men say, there is a tendency to lean a little too heavily on such a barrage, which had to be checked by taking the offender’s name. (“So, ye’ll understand, ye catch it, both ways; for if ye purshue the live barrage ye’ll likely to be killed; an’ if you purshue a dhrummy barrage too close, your name’s in the book. That’s War!”)
THE SOMME ADVANCE
By the middle of March the German line was giving all along; and when the Battalion moved up into Brigade Reserve on the 12th, they understood an advance was close at hand. Their allotted and sketchy stretch of trench, which they took over from the 4th Grenadiers (on the 13th March), was at Sailly-Saillisel, of evil associations, and on the 14th, on information received after patrolling under Lieutenant E. Budd and Lieutenant Bagenal, the German front line ahead was reported clear and at once occupied. Then they were committed to a muddle of German works in the direction of Le Mesnil-en-Arrouaise, which were named after the Idols of the Tribes. There was nothing to see or to steer by except devastated earth, mud, wire, scraps of sand-bags, heaped rubbish and carcases. The whole line went forward on the 15th, the 1st Battalion Irish Guards in touch by patrol with their 2nd Battalion on their right and on the left with the 2nd Coldstream. No one knew exactly what was in the enemy’s mind, or how far his retirement was extending, but an hour after the Battalion had started they came under long-range machine-gun and heavy artillery fire while they were consolidating “Bayreuth” trench. Major G. E. S. Young was so badly wounded this day by a shell, which came through a company headquarter’s dug-out he was visiting, that he died in a hospital a fortnight later and was buried at Grovetown cemetery, and Lieutenant Walter Mumford, M.C., was slightly wounded in the leg. The next trench, “Gotha,” was also under gun-fire. They simply moved forward, it seemed, into registered areas, where they were held up, as by a hose of high explosives, till the enemy had completed his local arrangements. Then his artillery on that sector would withdraw across clean, hard country; some long-range machine-gun or sniping work might continue for a while; and then all would be silent, with the sudden curious silences of the Somme, till the next step forward was made on our side and dealt with as above. Thus the Battalion worked through the emptied German trenches and dug-outs, and on the 20th March held a line from Le Mesnil-en-Arrouaise to Manancourt on the Tortille River. The German retreat was as orderly as an ebb-tide. In the north, Bapaume had been taken on the 17th March by the First and Second Australian Division, and Péronne was occupied on the 18th by the Forty-eighth Division. Beyond Bapaume our troops entered the third and last — Beugny–Ytres — line of German trench and wire-work that lay between them and the Hindenburg defences four or five miles behind it across open country. From Péronne southward to close upon Germaine, where we were in touch with the French, our advance-parties had crossed the Somme and spread themselves, as far as the state of the ground allowed, in — it could hardly be called pursuit so much as a heavy-footed following-up of the enemy, and making our own roads and tracks as we moved. We found everything usable thoughtfully destroyed, and had to reconstruct it from the beginnings, ere any further pressure could be exercised.
The German front before Arras was unaffected by their withdrawal, and here preparations of every conceivable sort were being piled up against the approaching battle of the Ancre where from Croiselles to Vimy Ridge our Third and First Armies broke through on a front of fifteen miles on April 9, and after a week’s desperate fighting, hampered as usual by the weather, carried that front four miles farther eastward, captured 13,000 prisoners and 200 guns; and, through the next month, fought their road up and into the northern end of the Hindenburg Line near Bullecourt whose name belongs to Australia.
On the 23rd of March the Battalion was taken out of its unmolested German trenches and marched to Combles, where it was used in road-making between Frégicourt, Bullet Cross-roads and Sailly-Saillisel, till the 5th of April. There was just one day in that stretch without rain, hail or snow, and when they were not road-making they buried dead and collected salvage and were complimented by the commanding officer of engineers on their good work. As the men said: “It was great days for the Engineers — bad luck to ‘em — but it kept us warm.”
Their total losses for March had been one officer, Major G. E. S. Young, killed and one, Lieutenant Walter Mumford, M.C., slightly wounded; fourteen other ranks killed and forty wounded — fifty-six in all or less than 10 per cent. of the Battalion’s strength at the time. Second Lieutenant H. V. Fanshawe joined on the 30th March.
On the 6th April they changed over to railway construction on the broad-gauge track between Morval and Rocquigny. The men camped at one end of Le Transloy village and Battalion Headquarters in the only house (much damaged) that still stood up. Here they stayed and slaved for a week, in hail and snow and heavy frosts at night; and were practically reclothed as their uniforms were not in the best of condition. (“Ye could not have told us from — from anything or anybody ye were likely to meet in those parts, ye’ll understand. But — one comfort — we was all alike — officers an’ all.”) A village that has not been too totally wrecked is a convenient dump to draw up. The men “improved” their camp and floored their tents out of material at hand, and were rewarded by finding usable German stores among the ruins. One sees how their morale held up, in spite of dirt, iron-rust and foul weather, from the fact that they went out of their way to construct — even as they had done at Ypres — ”a magnificent Irish Guards Star of glass and stones all surrounded by a low box-hedge.” Nor was it forgotten that they were soldiers; and, in spite of the railway-work, and the demands of the Sappers, some of the “specialists” and occasionally a company could be trained at Le Transloy. Even training is preferable to “fatigues,” and on the 15th of April they were taken in hand in good earnest. They marched twelve miles in pouring rain to a camp at Bronfay where “a very strict course of platoon training for all ranks was undertaken.” It began with twenty minutes’ walking or running (in the usual rain or snow) before breakfast at 7.30, and it continued with a half-hour’s break till half-past twelve. “Even after three days there was an appreciable improvement in drill and smartness,” says the Diary, and when their Brigadier inspected them on the 22nd April he was pleased to compliment. Of afternoons, every one seemed to lecture to every one else according to their seniority; the Brigadier on “Outposts”; the commanding officer — Major R. Baggallay — on “Advance and Rear Guards,” the officers to the platoon-sergeants on every detail of life-saving or taking, and when their own resources failed, the C.O. of the 2nd Coldstream lectured all officers and sergeants of the 1st Brigade on “the attack in open warfare.” It was a very thorough shaking-up — foot and transport — from the “specialists” to the cook’s mate; and it culminated in No. 5 Platoon (Lieutenant E. Budd) being chosen to represent the Battalion at the Brigade Platoon competition in Drill, Arms Drill, Musketry, Bayonet-fighting and a tactical exercise. The 2nd Grenadiers platoon won, but No. 5 justified itself by t
aking a very close second place. Survivors, who remember, assert that the platoons of those days were in knowledge, strength, and virtue immeasurably above all known standards of fighting men. (“And in the long run, d’ye see, they went with the rest. All gone! Maybe there’ll be one or two of ‘em left — policemen or tram-conductors an’ such like; but in their day an’ time, ye’ll understand, there was nothing could equal them.”)
The lighter side of life was supplied by the 3rd Coldstream’s historic and unparalleled “Pantomime,” which ran its ribald and immensely clever course for ten consecutive nights when the cars of the Staff might be seen parked outside the theatre precisely as in the West End.
On the 1st May they resumed work on the Etricourt–Fins railroad and made camp among the ruins of the village for the next three weeks in fine hot weather. The officers and N.C.O.’s were exercised freely at map-reading (which on the Somme required high powers of imagination), sketching reports and compass-work and occasionally officers and N.C.O.’s made up a platoon and worked out small tactical exercises — such as the rush-in and downing of a suddenly raised machine-gun after a barrage had lifted. The men were kept to the needs of railway and transport, but it was an easy life in warm, grassy Etricourt after months of mud and torn dirt. A swimming bath was dug for them; there were wild flowers to be gathered, and an orchard in blossom to show that the world still lived naturally, and their work was close to their parade-grounds. Men spoke affectionately of Etricourt where shell-holes were so few that they could count them.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 895