Only two nights were allowed for rest and refit, during which time a draft of fifty men under Lieutenant Kinahan joined, and the Battalion bombers were “organised” (they had not thrown very well lately) and made up to eight per platoon. That was on the 14th October. Next morning the Brigadier called up the C.O.’s of all four battalions and instructed them that every bomber was, as far as possible, to be given the chance of throwing a live bomb before going into the trenches again. He added that “again” meant next morning. On the morning of the 15th October, then, each one of those one hundred and twenty-eight organised bombers did, at practice, throw one live bomb. Says the Diary, without even a note of exclamation “With the knowledge, experience, and confidence thus gained, they had to face trained German bombers a few days later.” They might have had to face them that same evening when they took over some Brigade Reserve trenches, directly behind those of their first tour, from the 7th and 8th Sherwood Foresters; but they were merely shelled as they settled in, and the bombing fell farther down the line. Their new trenches were dirty and badly knocked about, but, by some obscure forethought or other, well provided with small and fairly safe dug-outs which gave cover to almost all. Though they were heavily shelled their first two days, and many direct hits fell on the parapet itself, and many men were buried, only two were killed outright and thirty-two wounded. The sensation of being pinned, even when one has one’s head above ground, by a weight of pressing earth, added to natural speculation as to whether the next shell may complete the burial, is a horror that returns to a man in his dreams, and takes the heart out of some even more than dysentery. (“There’s something in being held tight that makes you lose hold of yourself. I’ve seen men screamin’ and kickin’ like wired hares, and them no more than caught by one leg or two. ‘Tis against Nature for a man to be buried with his breath in him.”)
A RAID
On the 18th October they relieved the 1st Coldstream in the front line on the west face of Hohenzollern redoubt, which, were there choice, might be reckoned the very warmest sector of all the neighbourhood. Both battalions knowing their business, the relief was effected in two and a half hours under heavy shelling without casualty, though the Irish lost two killed and three wounded in the earlier part of the day. Their new position ran without definite distinction, except sandbagged barricades, into the German system, and one might at any time crawl into nests of enemy sentries and bombers. This, again, was a fresh experience to them. Loos had been clean cut in its boundaries. Their week in Left and Right Boyau from the 8th to the 15th October had not led to undue intimacies with anything worse than Jack Johnsons, but now they were promised a change of methods. Since the great breakthrough had failed that was to carry our triumphant arms to Lille, the authorities seemed to attach immense importance to the possession of a few score yards of enemy trench, commanded, when won, by a few thousand yards of other trenches, and were willing to expend much blood upon the captures. Doubtless there was deep design at the back of the detailed work, but, from the point of view of those who had to carry it through, it was a little wearisome. They were warned that bombing attacks would be the order of the day, and on the 10th October their Brigadier visited them and, as a preliminary, ordered that a trench should be run to connect Guildford Street, on the left of the redoubt as they faced it, with West Face Trench, a matter of some “sixty yards over ground fully exposed to hostile fire at a range of sixty yards.” In this manner, then, was the trench dug. Beginning in the dark at eight o’clock 2nd Lieutenant A. Pym, with a party of No. 1 Company, crept out of West Face, Lance-Sergeant Comesky leading, and the whole chain crawling behind him “extended” (on their stomachs) along the line to be dug. They had noted the bearing very carefully in the daytime, and a party in Guildford Street under 2nd Lieutenant T. Nugent were trying to help them to keep it, in a subdued tone. One must not shout when there are rifles and machine-guns, hands on triggers, fifty yards away. As the party lay they dug and scratched, first with their entrenching implements, and then with picks and shovels passed along the line; and Lance-Sergeant Comesky, the curve of whose labouring back in the darkness was their guide, had to keep his direction through broken wire, what had been broken men, shellholes, and the infinite tangle and waste of war. The Irish have some small reputation for digging when there is need. They dug that night as not even the 1st Battalion had dug, and when light came the new trench was four and a half feet deep, and the sole casualty was Lance-Sergeant Comesky, slightly wounded. They had been suspected and “slated” by machine-gun fire in their direction from time to time, but were not actually located till they were well down. As a point of vantage the new line had its defects. By daylight no periscope could live there half a minute ere it was knocked to shivers by rifle-fire.
Meantime a couple of little reconnaissances had been sent out. Private Horton (he had already shown his gifts in this direction), “supported by a corporal and another man,” made his way along an old blown-in trench that ran up the centre of the mass of the Hohenzollern works, till he heard Germans talking at the far end of it, and so reported. The second reconnaissance by Lance-Sergeant G. McCarthy and Private Kingston of No. 2 Company explored along another blown-in trench to the left of Private Horton’s line, which, before our guns had wrecked it, had been a continuation of West Face Trench and had run into Little Willie of unsavoury reputation, which latter in its turn trended almost due north into the German works. They found this trench barricaded just at its junction with Little Willie, were fired on by a German sentry, and came away. So far good. The Brigadier’s instructions next morning were for a night-attack to be made along both these trenches which lay parallel to each other; for barricades to be run up at the far end of the lengths gained; and, later, the two points to be joined up by a fresh cut. This, it was hoped, would pinch out about fifty yards of occupied German trench opposite the one which had been dug that night by 2nd Lieutenants A. Pym’s and Nugent’s party from Guildford Street to West Face. What might arrive after that was a question of luck, comparable to ferreting in a populous warren. The Battalion spent the day under shell-fire that killed one man and wounded nine, in making arrangements for bombs and sand-bags for the barricades, and decided that the chain of men working up the trenches, which barely allowed one and a half men abreast, should consist of two bombers, two riflemen; two bombers and two riflemen again; and four men to carry spare bombs. These were to drive the enemy back and hold them while new barricades were being built in the annexed territory. Then would come an officer and four more bombers to “hold the new barricade in event of the leading bombers being rushed while it was being built, then two men to build the barricade; then a chain of riflemen at two-yard intervals reaching back to the point of departure who would pass up more bombs or sand-bags as need arose,” and would clean up the old trench along which our advance was made, “so as to give us free access to our new barricade in daylight.” It is to be borne in mind that, at that time, the bombers of the 2nd Irish Guards had thrown just one live bomb apiece at training. (“We went in great dread of our rear-ranks that night. A bomb’s no thing — more than fixed bayonets — to go capering up trenches with at anny time. And the first time least of all.”)
The attack was confided to No. 4 Company (Captain Hubbard), who chose 2nd Lieutenants T. F. Tallents and Hamilton for the left and right attacks respectively. They led out at one in the morning, very carefully, for the men were cautioned to stalk the enemy as much as possible, but the moment they were discovered, to rush him back up the trench. So he had to be listened for in the dark, with a sky full of noises overhead. As soon as “contact had been obtained” — that is to say, as soon as the first crack of a bomb and the yell that accompanies it were heard down the cutting — the Very lights were sent up for a signal for our guns and the troops on either side to annoy and divert. Bombing affairs of the year ‘15 were on the most simple lines and unaccompanied by barrage. The left attack, when it had toiled some sixty yards from its starting-point, met a pa
rty of German bombers. What followed was inevitable. “Our bombers, who had never had an opportunity of throwing more than one live bomb each at training, were easily out-classed by the German bombers, and they were all either killed, wounded, or driven back immediately on to 2nd Lieutenant Tallents.” He was coming up twenty or thirty yards behind them, and had just reached some old smashed girders that had been part of a bridge or a dug-out, and back to this tangle the attack was driven. There a stand was made for a while by Tallents and two privates, Higgins and Brophy, till Brophy was killed and the officer and other private wounded. The Germans bombed their way on down to the barricades whence the attack had been launched, and for twenty minutes it was touch and go whether the Irish could hold it even there. All this while Tallents, though wounded, headed the resistance, urged the men to strengthen the barrier, and then got atop of it, “so as to make a longer or more accurate shot with a bomb.” Bombs ran short, as they usually do on such occasions; the bombers were down and between men’s feet among the wreckage. 2nd Lieutenant Coxon, who was sending up fresh men and bombs as best he might over broken ground in darkness down blind trappy trenches, indented on Battalion Headquarters for more, and the 1st Coldstream whirled their bombers in till, by means that no one can quite recall, the German rush was stayed long enough for a steady supply of munitions to arrive. This was about four in the morning, after a couple of hours of mixed rough-and-tumble that had died out for the moment to snaps of rifle-fire round corners, and the occasional glare of a bomb lobbed over some cover in the obstructed trench. Tallents had kept his place at the barrier all the time, and, at what turned out to be the psychological moment, launched a fresh attack down the trench, headed by Lance-Corporals J. Brennan and C. Anstey and backed by Lance-Corporal Cahill. It gave time for the men behind to further strengthen the defence, while more bombs were coming up. Then Tallents collapsed and “was removed to the dressing station,” and 2nd Lieutenant F. Synge was sent up to relieve him. He was hit in the head almost at once, but remained at his post, and “never relaxed his efforts to get the position consolidated and tenable,” until he too was withdrawn to the dressing-station after dawn. By this time the barricade was completed, and the communication-trench back to the main body was sufficiently cleared to enable work to be continued in daylight.
The smooth official language, impersonal as the account of an operation in a medical journal, covers up all the horror and sweat of the night, the desperate labour with anything that came to hand to make good the barrier, the automatic measurements of time and space as the struggle up the trench swayed nearer or farther, as well as the unspeakable absurdities that went sometimes with the very act and agony of a man’s death between the feet of his comrades. The things that cannot be recorded are those that are never forgotten. (“And a man can go missing in such kind of doings more easy than anything except direct hits from heavy stuff. There’s everything handy scraped up against a barricade that will stop a bullet, and in the dark how can one see or — what does one care? Bits of all sorts, as the saying is. And a man will take the wrong turn in a trench and then three or four bombs on him, and that shakes the side of it, the like of deep drains. Then the side all shuts down on what’s left, ye’ll understand, and maybe no living thing’ll come that way again till the war’s end. No! There will not be much left over to a bomber that’s missing.”)
The right attack, commanded by Captain Hubbard, which was down the old blown-in trench that ran straight towards the centre of the Hohenzollern, was a much tamer affair than the left. The enemy were not struck till our advance was some eighty yards up the cut. They fell back after a few bombs had been exchanged, and our men were able to build a new barricade across the trench fifty yards from their starting-point, with no serious opposition. Their chief difficulty was to clear the newly gained stretch of the hideous mess that choked it, and forced them into the open where the bullets were coming from three sides at once. The men are described as “slow” in settling to this navvywork, which, considering their distractions, was quite possible. Dawn caught them “with just enough cover to enable them to continue work in a crouching position, and before very many hours of daylight had passed they made it all good.” But their officer, 2nd Lieutenant Hamilton, was shot through the jaw while he was superintending the work (it is impossible to direct and give orders without standing up) and he died an hour later. He was buried on the afternoon of the same day at the lonely, flat little cemetery of Vermelles, which is now so full of “unknown British soldiers killed in action.” As the expert has already pointed out, “there’s not much left over to a bomber that’s missing.”
The total loss in the night’s fray was Hamilton killed, Tallents and Synge wounded, and about sixty other ranks killed, wounded, and missing. The net gain was a few score yards of trench, of which the enemy held both ends, with a “No Man’s Land” on either flank of about as far as one could throw a bomb over a barricade. In front, not a hundred yards off, a most efficient German trench with lavish machine-guns sniped them continuously between the breathing-spaces of our shell-fire. Our own big stuff, bursting on and near that trench, shook and loosened the sides of our own. The entire area had been fought over for months, and was hampered with an incredible profusion, or so it struck the new hands at the time, of arms, clothing, and equipment-from shreds, wisps, and clods of sodden uniforms that twist and catch round the legs, to loaded rifles that go off when they are trodden on in the mud or prised up by the entrenching tools. The bottom and sides of the cuts were studded with corpses whose limbs and, what was worse, faces stuck out of the mixed offal, and were hideously brought to light in cleaning up. However, as one youngster wrote home triumphantly, “I was never actually sick.”
The affair could hardly be called a success, and the Battalion did not pretend that it was more than a first attempt in which no one knew what was expected of them, and the men were not familiar with their weapons.
A REST AND LAVENTIE
On the evening of the 21st October they were relieved by the 1st Coldstream, and were grateful to go into Brigade Reserve in the trenches beside the Vermelles railway line, where they were out of direct contact with the enemy and the nerve-stretching racket of their own artillery shelling a short hundred yards ahead of them. (“The heavies are like having a good friend in a fight behind your back, but there’s times when he’ll punch ye in the kidneys trying to reach the other fella.”) They were put to cleaning up old communication-trenches, and general scavenging, which, though often in the highest degree disgusting, has a soothing effect on the mind, precisely as tidying out a room soothes a tired woman. For the first time in a month the strain on the young Battalion had relaxed, and since it was their first month at the front, they had felt the strain more than their elders. They had a general impression that the German line had been very nearly broken at Loos; that our pressure upon the enemy was increasingly severe; that their own artillery were much better and stronger than his, and that, taking one thing with another, the end might come at any moment. Since there were but a limited number of Huns in the world, it was demonstrable that by continually killing them the enemy would presently cease to exist. This, be it remembered, was the note in the Press and the public mind towards the close of 1915 — the War then redly blossoming into its second year.
As to their personal future, it seemed to be a toss-up whether they would be kept to worry and tease Huns in trenches, or moved off somewhere else to “do something” on a large scale; for at the back of the general optimism there lurked a feeling that, somehow or other, nothing very great had been actually effected. (Years later the veterans of twenty-five, six, and seven admitted: “We were a bit young in those days, and, besides, one had to buck up one’s people at home. But we weren’t quite such fools as we made ourselves out to be.”)
They were taken away from that sector altogether on the 23rd October, marched to Noyelles, thence to Béthune on the 25th, where they entrained for Lillers and billeted at Bourecq. This showed
that they had done with the chalk that does not hide corpses, and that the amazing mud round Armentières and Laventie would be their portion. At that date the Battalion stood as follows, and the list is instructive as showing how very little the army of that epoch had begun to specialise. It was commanded by Lieut.-Colonel Hon. L. Butler; Adjutant Captain (temporary) J. S. N. FitzGerald; Transport Officer Lieutenant C. Moore; Bomb Officer 2nd Lieutenant R. E. Coxon; Quartermaster 2nd Lieutenant J. Brennan. Companies: No. 1, Captain Witts, Lieutenant Nugent, 2nd Lieutenant Pym; No. 2, Captain (temporary) Parsons, 2nd Lieutenants Hannay and James; No. 3, Captain (temporary) R. Rankin, Lieutenant Montgomery, 2nd Lieutenant Watson; No. 4, Captain (temporary) Hubbard, Lieutenant Kinahan, 2nd Lieutenant Brew.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 911