The Somme

by Gristwood, A. D. ; Wells, H. G. ;

  The dug-out was lined on either side with a double tier of wire cots, like bunks in a ship’s cabin. Each cot afforded its owner just room enough to lie curled up like a cat. Close to his hand were rifle, helmet, and gas-mask. His equipment lay at his feet, and his pillow was a greasy knapsack; ground-sheet and leather jerkin softened the scanty straw; his body he rolled in a muddy blanket.

  Rations for to-morrow were stored in mess-tin and haversack, where bread and cheese and raisins, butter and bully-beef, socks and soap and chocolate, mingled affectionately together.

  A candle-end, welded by its own grease to the timber-work of the dug-out, gave a smoky, flickering light: a careless elbow now and again jerked it head-long into the straw.

  That night the narrow cots held some thirty men, who were unable to sit upright unless they swung their legs over the edge of their bed and crooked their necks to avoid the rough wire and timber. Some were brewing tea in mess-tins over ingenious portable cookers (made from cans of rifle-oil, with strips of ‘four by two’ for wick, or from rags floating in a tin of melted dubbin). Others were eating their supper, killing lice, cleaning rifles, writing letters, playing noisily at cards, reading, quarrelling, shaving and sleeping. So long as they were awake they were all busy. Meditation was unpopular.

  Early in the evening the growl of guns had broken out northwards towards St. Quentin, but now all was quiet again. It was intense drum-fire while it lasted, however, and might well carry a definite warning. We drank the rum-ration, an all too scanty mouthful (the sergeants knew why); we blew out the lights; save for the whisper of the sentries by the brazier in the doorway, all was quiet in the dug-out. ‘Get as much rest as you can, boys, for you may have a busy day to-morrow.’

  III

  We were aroused by the grumbling thunder of guns. For a few minutes those who were first awake lay half-conscious of the sound and wondering idly what it might mean: then came remembrance and with it fear. Lights gleamed here and there in the gloom and men rose in their cots and asked one another what was the matter. They knew only too well, but it comforted them to ask. In a few minutes someone went outside to see how things were going, but almost immediately he returned in company with the gas-guards nominally on duty. As they blundered down the stairs one man caught his finger in his trigger, and fired mercifully into the floor. The noise and the acrid smell of the explosion thoroughly aroused us. There was no longer any doubt; the long-threatened day had dawned at last.

  The noise of the gun-fire was deadened by the long double flight of stairs and the two heavy gas-curtains made of Army blankets, but the sentries reported that a heavy barrage was falling some hundred yards behind the line of the dug-outs. That there was danger was evident from their haggard faces and nervous, jerky movements. Obviously they had stood at their posts until lonely men could endure no longer.

  The attack could not come before dawn, and we thus had before us at least three hours of nerve-racking idleness. Would they man battle positions now, or wait for daylight? Suspense and ignorance were maddening, and, feeling I could remain quiet no longer, I determined to venture above ground.

  In a moment I left behind me the warmth and light of the dug-out, the comforting presence of my fellow-prisoners, and the sound and solace of their voices. The dull growl and rumble outside grew abruptly louder and more menacing. In the dense darkness of the stairs I groped my way slowly from landing to landing, finding the gas-curtains by blundering into them, and tripping over the weighted blocks that held them down. At the mouth of the shelter the night was as dark as the pit. Behind the German lines thousands of guns were in action, the sound of their firing like water bubbling in a cistern – like, but infinitely louder. From the east there rushed a steady, never-ceasing stream of shells, the clamour of their onset rising to a menacing climax overhead. Despite their hideous roar and racket, they gave me the impression that they were in no sort of hurry, but intended to persevere in their remorseless task of destruction until all resistance had been smashed to dust and ashes. A little way ahead, among the shattered houses and orchards of Amigny, they were bursting with a ringing, rending crash, magnified, if that were possible, by the echo from the walls. The glare of explosions stained the night like lightning. Everywhere I could hear the whizz and ping of scattering fragments.

  The danger was real enough, though the darkness and the early hour exaggerated it, and it was with a sinking heart that I stumbled downstairs again to the perplexed Council of War among the shadows. And there we remained for several hours, wondering and conjecturing and prophesying. It seemed clear enough that we were cut off from our supports by the bombardment, but we had no means of discovering what was happening elsewhere. We were a little group of shipwrecked adventurers, isolated from the world, boxed up in a cave, and liable to instant death or mutilation if we left our shelter. For that is the danger of dug-outs – they sap the morale of those who use them. It is safe down there, and the temptation is to stay down indefinitely until the enemy appears at the entrance with bomb and rifle.

  The gun-fire was growing heavier, and crashing blows drove home apparently just overhead. Deadened though they were by the thickness of earth, yet the ground shook, the candles shuddered, and a dull concussion blunted our senses. Sometimes two or three buffets fell in quick succession on the roof. What must be the turmoil outside when such an effect could be felt thirty feet below ground? Suppose a shell blocked the stairways! It is another disadvantage of thus hiding in safety that dismal forebodings darken a mind that has no necessary work to distract it. I imagined a feverish digging for life, while the air grew slowly fouler and strength failed relentlessly.

  It was essential that someone should take over the gas-guard, but the service was not a popular one. The sentry must stand in the open and, from the scanty shelter of a wooden sentry-box, be ready to sound the alarm on a wooden rattle or an empty shell-case used bell-fashion. Even short spells of half an hour thus employed seemed an eternity, and the relief men sometimes sought to escape duty by pretending to doze in their bunks. The danger was invested with the horror of the unknown and imperfectly realized, and we tried in vain to extract grains of comfort from the sentries as they returned. ‘How’s things up above, chum? Is it light yet? Is he slacking off?’ And always the same reply: ‘Pretty thick, mate. Pretty thick.’

  Once there came an alarm and the sweetish, cloying smell of ‘pineapple gas.’ We muzzled ourselves in our masks and sat for a time in a compulsory silence, like a legion of dumb and hideous devils, but the heat of the masks, the blindness caused by condensed moisture on the windows, the foul taste of the rubber mouthpieces, the choking pressure of the nose-clips – these various torments made us ready to take risks. Men were continually removing their masks in order to taste the air, and for the most part held them hanging from their cases.

  Breakfast was an affair of bread and cheese and water, for the cook-house, a crazy shed of corrugated iron some hundred yards from shelter, was deserted and inaccessible. It was certain that this was the last meal some of us would ever eat, but on the surface at all events we preserved a semblance of cheerfulness. Again and again we told one another that the attack, when it came (for we were so far resigned now), must needs break itself upon our elaborate preparations. Thus, above a current of fear and disgust we yet managed to build a bridge of hope, and we built it of various materials. Some were feverishly gay, and sang and laughed for all the world like men on a picnic. Others took refuge in a light-hearted cynicism, and assumed that the worst always happens and that nothing goes right beneath the sun – a useful pose beneath which Atkins habitually hides his deeper feelings. Others again remained impassive and resolutely unimpressed. My own feeling was of exasperation at being caught so narrowly in the trap. Spoiled by a fortnight’s good living, and morbidly convinced that bad would go to worse, I had an uneasy consciousness of a tired battalion dispirited and exhausted by weeks of anxious forebodings.

  The meal was too poor to cheer us after the mann
er of bacon and hot tea, and afterwards we had nothing to do but forecast the future. Some of the men, too excited to rest, took refuge in cards and argument, but the majority simply squatted in their bunks, waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Can you imagine that dark, gloomy, noxious cavern, lit dimly by guttering candles and ever and again shaken by the tremendous concussions overhead; the dirty, haggard faces asking dumbly why this horror had come upon them? They were waiting to be called into an inferno of iron and lead and choking gases, where dust and smoke and monstrous spouts of earth were writhing among shattered houses, and trees and hedges were splintering fast to matchwood. It is a damning admission, and one probably unique in the annals of War, but the spirit of the troops was not entirely excellent.

  IV

  At length our fears were realized, and the Captain of our Company roused us to man battle positions. Mr. Stewart was a tough, hard-bitten little Scotsman and, out since Mons, was by no means prone to panic; but then, if ever, I read in his face an ill-controlled foreboding. Scourged by his impatience, we seized rifles and equipment and stumbled clumsily towards the stairs. Dawn had broken outside, but a thick mist hid the sun. The Germans could have asked for nothing better. You could not see ten yards.

  Once outside and hurrying towards the trenches, we lost that feeling of trapped helplesssness that made the dugout so terrible a resting-place. The bombardment was now falling on the village some forty or fifty yards behind us, and Amigny was visibly falling to pieces. Clouds of dust and smoke, rose-coloured from the shattered brick-work, rose continually among the collapsing houses, and from these shifting volcanoes there rained bricks and timber and clods of earth and splintered trunks of trees. On the hard pavé of the roads the shells could make but little impression (although there they were the more dangerous by reason of flying fragments of stone), but elsewhere they dug smoking craters in the scorched and tumbled meadows.

  Ducking our heads instinctively, we hurried towards a narrow fire-trench that opened from a lane that four years ago was a leafy haunt of lovers. The shelter was meagre, but we entered it with an ostrich sigh of satisfaction. This was no consolidated line with revetted traverses and sand-bagged parapet, but merely a roughly dug and tortuous ditch, perhaps six feet deep and for the most part three feet wide. The crumbling fire-steps were growing muddy with the thaw of last night’s frost. A hit anywhere near the brink of the trench would have smashed it in an instant, but by crouching frogwise below the parapet we found shelter from ground-shrapnel.

  Distributing ourselves in groups of two and three along the trench, we mounted our Lewis guns with pans fully charged for firing, leaned cocked rifles with fixed swords against the parapet, and removed from bandoliers all surplus ammunition. And everybody lit a cigarette. It is well known that the consumption of cigarettes varies directly with the strength of the bombardment. To crouch in a hole, thinking of what may be about to happen – that way lies madness. Four cynics even made bold to defy Fate with a game of nap.

  While we stood smoking, Captain Stewart and his batman appeared suddenly above the parapet. The latter was carrying a dozen S.O.S. rockets, which he distributed among us with the air of a man bestowing charity. Poor ‘Minnie’ West, so nicknamed by reason of a falsetto voice and a finicking manner, did not appear to enjoy his errand, ducked nervously at any nearer shell, and grinned only half-heartedly at sarcastic references to Guy Fawkes. Immediately to our right the trench-line turned backwards among the last houses of the village, and was accordingly exposed to the full strength of the barrage. The right flank of the Company was thus the post of greatest danger, and in a few minutes came the call for stretcher-bearers. Minnie had been unlucky. For that is the Army’s formula of sympathy. A man has been blown to pieces, or detailed to peel potatoes, or drowned in a shell-hole, or robbed of his rations. His friends have only one comment to make: ‘He’s unlucky.’ And after all, what more is there to say?

  All the morning we remained idle in the trench. Whenever a shell fell short we ducked and dodged convulsively, aware of the futility of such action, but powerless to avoid it. Shell splinters flew past our heads and between our legs, and once a fragment of jagged steel whizzed viciously against the back of a man who was peacefully writing letters. For a moment we thought that he was wounded, but the crossed straps of his equipment had softened the blow, and beneath the half-severed leather there was nothing to see but a dull red bruise. Every one sympathized with him, and he resumed his letter in the spirit of a man with a grievance. To miss a ‘Blighty One’ is the great misfortune. Any moderate degree of maiming carries with it the certainty of rest and peace and cleanliness, and (who knows?) the possibility of the crowning mercy of a ‘ticket.’

  Somewhere about noon a shell knocked out an isolated Strong Point on our right flank, smashed the Lewis gun, and killed three of the gunners. Shortly afterwards another shell fell within a yard of the survivors as they were busily mounting another gun. This time no one was wounded, but the concussion stunned the Section-leader; and his chums, demoralized by misfortune, took matters into their own hands and abandoned their post. With them they dragged laboriously the unconscious corporal, blackened with stinking smoke, groaning feebly, and bleeding from nose and ears. In a little while, however, he had recovered, and they were once again mounting their gun in a new and safer position.

  For this desertion they stood in little danger of a reprimand. Save for the Captain’s visit just after our arrival we had so far seen only one officer – a subaltern who made one hurried tour of the trench and then vanished suddenly in the direction of Headquarters. And indeed at such times it is often no easy matter for Atkins to discover the whereabouts of those leaders he is universally reputed to adore. Normally, on these occasions the parade-martinets and inspectors of brass buttons are far too busy organizing victory in a dug-out to concern themselves with discipline, and thus the deserters need have no fear of either discovery or punishment.

  Twelve hours had passed since our first arousing, and still there was no sign of an attack. Away to the north the roar of the bombardment seemed louder than ever, and mingled with it we could now hear the deadliest sound in warfare, the angry chatter of machine-guns. All the afternoon their staccato rattle continued. We guessed that a fierce attack was being pushed to desperation beyond the river, but no one knew with what success. I say no one knew, but towards evening the first definite rumours crept to us by way of runners from Battalion Headquarters. The Germans, so they said, had attacked over the whole front from Arras to La Fère, and had broken through a five-mile sector to a depth of three. There was also current a suspiciously circumstantial story that south of the river they would follow up a nine hours’ high-explosive bombardment with four hours’ gas shelling as a prelude to attack. We were in no mood to disbelieve the wildest tales and, cleaning and re-cleaning our rifles argued and speculated continually. Long after noon, however, the big howitzer shells were still bursting in a steady stream. Four o’clock came and no gas alarm! It seemed probable we should see no Germans until to-morrow.

  During the afternoon the cooks ventured to light fires in the open. They boiled water for tea, and even fried some war-worn bacon; and with this, our rations of bread and cheese, and a tin of sardines, we made what was almost a cheerful meal. ‘The grub puts guts into you,’ and we now felt twice the men to grapple with our troubles. In retrospect it seems amusing enough to pause midway in a mouthful of bread and bacon in order to estimate the changing range of the barrage. The ear automatically picks out from the roar of the bombardment the angry whirr of one shell nearer than others. Should the threat pass very closely, every one crouches as flat as may be among the sooty dixies, mingling gulped tea with lurid blasphemy. The noise of an express train grows in a swift crescendo, passes overhead with a vicious, deep-toned hum, and, changing suddenly to a fiercely-purposeful, downward-rushing whizz, culminates not twenty yards away in the shattering roar of an explosion that resembles nothing so much as the careless unloading of a cargo
of iron rails. And so back to tea and bacon.

  Towards evening the fog melted beneath a jovial sun that mocked men’s madness from a cloudless sky. We could now see the flat fields ahead, covered with the rustling skeletons of last year’s uncut hay, and the tortuous line of our wire half-way towards the forest. Danger of surprise being thus greatly lessened, some of the men were allowed to return to the dug-out for two hours’ rest. Down in the gloom of the cave the noise of the guns slackened to a hoarse rumbling, and, free for the moment from the fear of pouncing danger, we could relax tired limbs in the straw and forget our troubles in an instant slumber. This two hours’ shelter from the storm came to us like a reprieve to a condemned man. It seemed almost criminal to waste such precious moments in sleep, but the majority could not have remained awake had their lives depended on it. They sank like logs into their cots, and, when roused again two hours later, grumbled venomously that they had not been resting for five minutes.

  We stood-to in the half-light of dusk, and then waited in bright moonlight that presently faded to darkness lit by the gleam of guns. Towards midnight all save two men at each post were recalled to the dug-out; outside, the unlucky sleepy sentries watched patiently for dawn. And so ended for us one of the bloodiest days in the history of that bloodstained year. We had escaped the worst, and our casualties were few. But how were we to interpret those sinister rumours of events across the river?

  V

  The two succeeding days we passed on a knife-edge of perplexity and apprehension. On the third evening we had official news from Corps Headquarters that the enemy had broken completely through the advanced posts and battle positions of the Fifth Army, and was thought to be within a few miles of Chauny. This was serious news indeed, for if he should enter the town and destroy the bridges over the Oise, we should be cut off by the river, not only from the remainder of the Division, but from the whole British Army. The lines of communication directly to our rear were used entirely by the French, and all our supplies came from the north-west. The forest extended to within little more than a mile of Chauny, and if this narrow gap were once closed, our only line of retreat must pass through the tangled thickets of the Bois de Coucy, where it would be impossible to maintain either coherence or discipline. No rumour was too wild to find backers. A French Army Corps was detraining behind us. (This I was afterwards able to confirm: it was part of Foch’s Army of Manœuvre.) Five hundred men were besieged in Fort Vendeuil. The Guards had relieved the garrison there and swept the Germans back to the river.