The enemy’s front was giving before the attack of eight divisions, but not without sudden and awkward resistances, due to the cut-up and trenched state of the ground, that hid too many machine-guns for comfort; and the gas-nuisance grew steadily worse.
The Battalion lay where they were the next day (August 22), but sent out a patrol under 2nd Lieutenant Faraday to work up a trench near Hamel Switch, to the north of Hamelincourt. After capturing four Germans it came under machine-gun fire from Hamelincourt. A platoon was sent to support it, but was withdrawn as the Hamelincourt attack had been postponed till the next day. Then the patrol had to retire across abominable shallow trenches, clogged with wire and lavishly machine-gunned. The Germans tried to cut them off. They withdrew, fighting. Their Lewis-gun was knocked out and five men wounded. While these were being helped back, the Lieutenant and two men, Sergeant Dolan and Private Tait, covered the retreat among the wire. Next, Faraday was wounded badly in the foot, and the sergeant and private carried him in turn, he being six feet long and not narrow, while the rest of the party threw bombs at the Germans, and tried to close with them. Eventually they all reached home safe. Dolan’s one comment on the affair was: “‘Tis heavy going out yonder.” Lieutenant Faraday was awarded the M.C. and Dolan the D.C.M. Later on, in 1919, Dolan also received the Medaille Militaire for gallantry on many occasions.
Seen against the gigantic background of the opening campaign, it was a microscopical affair — a struggle of ants round a single grain — but it moved men strongly while they watched.
For the reason that always leads a battalion to be hardest worked on the edge of battle, they were taken out of the line on the 23rd, cautiously, under gas and common shell, and marched back seven miles in five hours to Berles-au-Bois behind Monchy-au-Bois in order to be marched back again next day to Boiry-St. Martin, where they spent the day in the Cojeul valley, and afterwards (August 25) moved up into support in the Hamel Switch between Hamelincourt and St. Léger. Hamelincourt had been taken on the 23rd by the 2nd Brigade, and as the night came down wet, the “men made what shelters they could from corrugated iron and wood lying about.” The trenches hereabouts had every disadvantage that could be desired. Some were part of the Army Line and had been dug a foot or two deep with the spade as lines to be developed in case of need. Presumably, it was nobody’s business to complete them, so when the trouble arrived, these gutters, being officially trenches, were duly filled by the troops, and as duly shelled by the enemy.
For example, when the Battalion moved forward on the 26th their trenches were waist-deep, which, to men who had spent most of the day in the dry bed of the Cojeul River, under gas and common shell, was no great treat.
Since the 21st August the Guards Division had been well employed. Its 2nd Brigade, with the Second Division on its right, had captured the Ablainzevelle–Moyenneville spur; and the Second Division had taken Courcelles. By the night of the 23rd, when the 3rd Guards Brigade relieved the 2nd, and the Second Division had captured Ervillers on the Arras–Bapaume road, the Guards Division, with their 1st Brigade in support, was within half a mile of St. Léger, and in touch with the Fifty-sixth Division on their left, which was trying to work round the head of the Hindenburg Line and turn in from the north. At this point resistance stiffened. The hilly ground, cut and cross-cut with old trenches and the beginnings of new ones, lent itself to the stopping game of well-placed machine-guns equally from round Croisilles, where the Fifty-sixth Division was engaged; from about St. Léger Wood, where the 3rd Guards Brigade, supported by tanks, was renewing its acquaintance with the German anti-tank-rifle; and from Mory, where the Sixty-second Division was delayed by the Division on its right being held up. An enemy balloon or two hung on the horizon and some inquisitive, low-flying aeroplanes hinted at coming trouble. The line expected as much, but they did not seem so well informed farther back.
THE AFFAIR OF ST. LÉGER
On the 26th August orders arrived that the 1st Guards Brigade would now take up the running from the 3rd, and advance eastward from St. Léger towards Ecoust till opposition was met. There were, of course, refinements on this idea, but that was the gist of it. The 2nd Grenadiers and the 2nd Coldstream would attack, with the Battalion in support. The men were in their trenches by tea-time on the 26th, No. 1 Company in Jewel Trench just east of the entrance to the little Sensée River valley, and the others disposed along the line of Mory Switch, an old trench now only a foot deep. Battalion Headquarters lay in an abandoned German stores dug-out. Final orders did not arrive till after midnight on the 26th, and there was much to arrange and link up between then and seven o’clock, barrage time. The Grenadiers were on the right and the Coldstream on the left of the Battalion, the latter following a quarter of a mile behind, with Nos. 1 and 3 Companies to feed the Grenadiers and Nos. 4 and 2 for the Coldstream. As the front was so wide, they split the difference and kept as close as might be to the dividing line between the two leading Battalions, which ran by Mory Switch and Hally Avenue. The hot day broke with a gorgeous sunrise over a desolate landscape that reeked in all its hollows of gas and cordite. A moment or two after our barrage (field-guns only) opened, the enemy put down a heavy reply, and into the smoke and dust of it the companies, in artillery formation, walked up the road without hesitation or one man losing his place. No. 1 Company leading on the right disappeared at once after they had passed their jumping-off point at Mory Switch. Almost the first shells caught the leading platoon, when Lieutenant J. N. Ward was killed and Lieutenant P. S. MacMahon wounded. As soon as they were clear of the barrage, they came under full blast of machine-gun fire and saw the Grenadiers presently lie down enfiladed on both flanks. Four of our machine-guns tried to work forward and clear out the hindrances, but the fire was too strong. Both battalions were finally held up, and the Grenadiers were practically cut to pieces, with their reserve companies, as these strove to reinforce the thinned line. After what seemed an immense time (two hours or so) Captain Thompson, seeing that, as far as that sector was concerned, the thing was hung up, ordered his men to dig in in support, and they spent till nightfall “recovering casualties” — their own, those of the battalions ahead, and of the Guards Machine-Guns.
No. 3 Company, which followed No. 1, suffered just as heavily from the barrage. Very soon their commander, Captain Joyce, was wounded and Lieutenant H. U. Baldwin killed. Second Lieutenant Heaton, who took over, was gassed in the course of the afternoon, and C.S.M. O’Hara then commanded. There was nothing for them to do either save dig in, like No. 1, behind the Grenadiers, and a little to the right of them.
No. 4 Company, under Captain Hegarty, following the Coldstream, got the worst barrage of all as soon as they were clear of their trenches, and found the Coldstream held up, front and flank, within fifty yards of the sunken road whence they had started. No. 15 platoon of the Irish Guards was almost wiped out, and the remains of it joined with No. 13 to make a defensive flank, while No. 14 crawled or wriggled forward to reinforce the Coldstream, and No. 16 lay in reserve in a sunk road. Sunk roads were the only shelter for such as did not wish to become early casualties.
No. 2 Company (Captain A. Paget) following No. 4 had been held back for a few minutes by the C.O. (Major R. Baggallay) on the fringe of the barrage, to be slipped through when it seemed to lighten. They also launched out into a world that was all flank or support, of battalions which could neither be seen nor found, who were themselves outflanked by machine-guns in a landscape that was one stumbling-block of shallow trenches which suddenly faded out. They crossed the St. Léger–Vraucourt road and bore east, after clearing the St. Léger wood, till they reached the St. Léger reserve trench, and held it from the Longatte road to where it joined the Banks Reserve. Says one record: “At this time, Captain Paget was in ignorance of the success or location of the attacking battalions, and both of his flanks exposed as far as he knew.” The enemy machine-guns were hammering home that knowledge, and one of the platoons had lost touch altogether, and was out in the deadly open
. So in the trench they lay till an officer of the Coldstream came over and told Paget the “general situation,” which, unofficially, ran: “This show is held up.” He borrowed a section from No. 5 Platoon to help to build up a flank to guard the east side of St. Léger and vanished among the increasing shellholes.
Well on in the morning a message arrived from Captain Hegarty, No. 4 Company, that he and his men were on the St. Léger–Vraucourt road and held up like the rest. Captain Paget went over, in the usual way, by a series of bolts from shell-hole to shellhole, trying to clear up an only too-clear situation. On the way he found a lost platoon, sent it to dig in on the left of No. 2 Company, and also saw the C.O. 2nd Coldstream and explained his own dispositions. They were not made too soon, for in a short time there was an attack on No. 2 Company which came within sixty yards before it was broken up by our small-arm fire. The Germans were followed up as they returned across the Ecoust–Mory ridge by long-range shooting in which, for the sake of economy, captured enemy rifles and ammunition were used.
By this time the whole front was split up into small or large scattered posts in trenches or under cover, each held down by machine-guns which punished every movement. Two Companies (2 and 4) were near the St. Léger Trees, a clump of nine trees on the St. Léger–Ecoust road, mixed up with the Coldstream posts. The other two were dug in behind the Grenadiers on the right. Battalion Headquarters circulated spasmodically and by rushes, when it saw its chance, from one point to the other of the most unwholesome ground. Even at the time, some of its shellhole conferences struck the members as comic; but history does not record the things that were said by dripping officers between mouthfuls of dirt and gas.
Every battle has its special characteristic. St. Léger was one of heat, sunshine, sweat; the flavour of at least two gases tasted through respirators or in the raw; the wail of machine-gun bullets sweeping the crests of sunken roads; the sudden vision of wounded in still-smoking shell-holes or laid in the sides of a scarp; sharp whiffs of new-spilt blood, and here and there a face upon which the sun stared without making any change. So the hours wore on, under a sense of space, heat, and light; Death always just over the edge of that space and impudently busy in that light.
About what would have been tea-time in the real world, Captain Paget, a man of unhurried and careful speech and imperturbable soul, reported to the C.O., whom he found by the St. Léger Trees, that there were “Huns on his right — same trench as himself.” It was an awkward situation that needed mending before dusk, and it was made worse by the posts of the Coldstream and some Guards Machine-Guns’ posts, as well as those of our No. 4 Company, being mixed up within close range of No. 2. The C.O. decided that if a barrage could be brought to bear on the trench and its rather crowded neighbourhood, No. 2 might attack it. A young gunner, Fowler by name, cast up at that juncture and said it might be managed if the Battalion withdrew their posts round the area. He had a telephone, still uncut, to his guns and would observe their registration himself. The posts, including those of the Guards Machine-Guns, were withdrawn, and Fowler was as near as might be killed by one of his own registering shots. He got his 18-pounders to his liking at last, and ten minutes’ brisk barrage descended on the trench. When it stopped, and before our men could move, up went a white flag amid yells of “Kamerad,” and the Huns came out, hands aloft, to be met by our men, who, forgetting that exposed troops, friend and foe alike, would certainly be gunned by the nearest enemy-post, had to be shooed and shouted back to cover by their officers. The prisoners, ninety of them, were herded into a wood, where they cast their helmets on the ground, laughed, and shook hands with each other, to the immense amusement of our people. The capture had turned a very blank day into something of a success, and the Irish were grateful to the “bag.” This at least explains the politeness of the orderly who chaperoned rather than conducted the Hun officer to the rear, with many a “This way, sir. Mind out, now, sir, you don’t slip down the bank.” They put a platoon into the captured trench and lay down to a night of bursts of heavy shelling. But the enemy, whether because of direct pressure or because they had done their delaying work, asked for no more and drew back in the dark.
When morning of the 28th broke “few signs of enemy movement were observed.” Men say that there is no mistaking the “feel of the front” under this joyous aspect. The sense of constriction departs as swiftly as a headache, and with it, often, the taste that was in the mouth. One by one, as the lovely day went on, the patrols from the companies made their investigations and reports, till at last the whole line reformed and, in touch on either flank, felt forward under light shelling from withdrawing guns. An aeroplane dropped some bombs on the Battalion as it drew near to the St. Léger Trees, which wounded two men and two gunner officers, one of whom — not Fowler, the boy who arranged for the barrage — died in Father Browne’s arms. On the road at that point, where the wounded and dying of the fight had been laid, only dried pools of blood and some stained cotton-wads remained darkening in the sun. Such officers as the gas had affected in that way went about their routine-work vomiting disgustedly at intervals.
Battalion Headquarters, which had nominally spent the previous day in a waist-deep trench, set up office at the St. Léger Trees, and the advance of the Guards Division continued for a mile or so. Then, on a consolidated line, with machine-guns chattering to the eastward, it waited to be relieved. As prelude to their watch on the Rhine, the affair was not auspicious. The Grenadiers, on whom the brunt of the fight fell, were badly knocked out, and of their sixteen officers but four were on their feet. The Coldstream were so weakened that they borrowed our No. 4 Company to carry on with, and the Irish thought themselves lucky to have lost no more than two officers (Lieutenant J. N. Ward and Lieutenant H. R. Baldwin) dead, and six wounded or gassed, in addition to a hundred and seventy other ranks killed or wounded. The wounded officers were Captain W. Joyce; Lieutenants P. S. MacMahon and C. A. J. Vernon, who was incapacitated for a while by tear-gas in the middle of action and led away blinded and very wroth; also 2nd Lieutenants H. A. Connolly, G. T. Heaton, and A. E. Hutchinson.
The Division was relieved on the night of the 28th the Battalion itself, as far as regarded No. 1 Company, by the 1st Gordons, from the Third Division, Nos. 2 and 4 Companies by another battalion, and No. 3 Company under the orders of the 2nd Grenadiers. They marched back to their positions of the night before the battle “very glad that it was all behind us,” and their shelters of bits of wood and rough iron seemed like rest in a fair land.
On the 29th August, a hot day, they lay in old trenches over the Moyenneville spur in front of Adinfer Wood facing Douchy and Ayette, where “three weeks ago no man could have lived.” They talked together of the far-off times when they held that line daily expecting the enemy advance; and the officers lay out luxuriously in the wood in the evening after Mess, while the men made themselves “little homes in it.”
Next day they rested, for the men were very tired, and on the last of the month the whole Battalion was washed in the divisional baths that had established themselves at Adinfer. But the enemy had not forgotten them, and on the first of September their shelters and tents in the delightful wood were bombed. Six men were injured, five being buried in a trench, and of these two were suffocated before they could be dug out.
TOWARDS THE CANAL DU NORD
And that was all the rest allowed to the Battalion. On the 2nd September the Canadian Corps of the First Army broke that outlying spur of the Hindenburg System known as the Drocourt–Quéant Switch, with its wires, trenches, and posts; and the Fifty-seventh and Fifty-second Divisions, after hard work, equally smashed the triangle of fortifications north-west of Quéant where the Switch joined the System. The gain shook the whole of the Hindenburg Line south of Quéant and, after five days’ clean-up behind the line, the Guards Division were ordered to go in again at the very breast of Hindernburg’s works. No one knew what the enemy’s idea might be, but there was strong presumption that, if he did not hold
his defence at that point, he might crack. (“But, ye’ll understand, for all that, we did not believe Jerry would crack past mendin’.” )
The Battalion spent the night of the 2nd September, then, in shelters in Hamel Switch Trench on their way back from Adinfer Wood to the battle. The front had now shifted to very much the one as we held in April, 1917, ere the days of Cambrai and Bourlon Wood. The 1st Guards Brigade were in Divisional Reserve at Lagnicourt, three miles south-west of Ecoust-St.Mein, where the Battalion had to cross their still fresh battle-field of less than a week back, as an appetizer to their hot dinners. They occupied a waist-deep old trench, a little west of Lagnicourt, and noticed that there was no shelling, though the roads were full of our traffic, “a good deal of it in full view of Bourlon Wood.” Going over “used” ground for the third time and noting one’s many dead comrades does not make for high spirit even though one’s own Divisional General has written one’s own Brigadier, “All battalions of the 1st Guards Brigade discharged their duty splendidly at St. Léger.”
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 904