From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 Part 11

He laughed and said, "They stick it till all's blue, night and day. What they hate are fatigues and carrying up the sh.e.l.ls for other batteries.

They'll work till they drop, serving their own guns."

He looked over to Lens and said, "We'll soon have old Fritz out of that." I think they were some of his sh.e.l.ls that I saw bursting behind the Bois de Riaumont.

All through this battle our airmen have been untiring, too. Two of our men, a pilot and an observer, were attacked by a squadron of twenty-eight hostile machines, and the pilot was grievously wounded. He was badly hit in the leg, and one of his eyes hung only by a thread.

But, with a supreme act of courage, he kept control of his machine and landed safely. He was dying when he was helped on to a stretcher and brought home to camp; but he made his report very clearly and calmly until he was overcome by the last faintness of death.

Our men have still most b.l.o.o.d.y fighting before them. The enemy is still in great strength. We shall have to mourn most tragic and fearful losses. But the tide of battle seems to be setting in our favour, and beating back against the walls of the German armies, who must hear the approach of it with forebodings, because the barriers they built have broken and there are no impregnable ramparts behind.

VI

THE SLAUGHTER AT LAGNICOURT

APRIL 16

What happened at Lagnicourt yesterday is one of the bloodiest episodes in all this long tale of slaughter. At 4.30, before daybreak, the enemy made a very heavy attack upon our lines, where we are far beyond the old system of trenches and for a time in real open warfare of the old style, which I, for one, never believed would come again. The enemy's lines were protected with a new belt of barbed wire, without which he can never stay on any kind of ground; but it was this which proved his undoing. His ma.s.sed attack against Australian troops had a brief success. Battalions of Prussian Guards, charging in waves, broke through our forward posts, and drove a deep wedge into our positions. Here they stayed for a time, doing what damage they could, searching round for prisoners, and waiting, perhaps, for reserves to renew and strengthen the impetus of their attack. But the Australian staff officers were swift in preparing and delivering the counter-blow, which fell upon the enemy at 7.30. Companies of Australians swept forward, and with irresistible spirit flung themselves upon the Prussians, forcing them to retreat. They fell back in an oblique line from their way of advance, forced deliberately that way by the pressure and direction of the Australian attack. At the same time our batteries opened fire upon them with shrapnel as they ran, more and more panic-stricken, towards their old lines. The greatest disaster befell them, for they found themselves cut off by their own wire, those great broad belts of sharp spiked strands which they had planted to bar us off.

What happened then was just appalling slaughter. The Australian infantry used their rifles as never rifles have been used since the first weeks of the war, when our old regulars of the first expeditionary force lay down at Le Cateau on the way of their retreat and fired into the advancing tide of Germans, so that they fell in lines.

Yesterday, in that early hour of the morning, the Australian riflemen fired into the same kind of target of ma.s.sed men, not far away, so that each shot found the mark. The Prussians struggled frantically to tear a way through the wire, to climb over it, crawl under it. They cursed and screamed, ran up and down like rats in a trap, until they fell dead.

They fell so that dead bodies were piled upon dead bodies in long lines of mortality before and in the midst of that spiked wire. They fell and hung across its strands. The cries of the wounded, long tragic wails, rose high above the roar of rifle-fire and the bursting of shrapnel. And the Australian soldiers, quiet and grim, shot on and on till each man had fired a hundred rounds, till more than fifteen hundred German corpses lay on the field at Lagnicourt. Large numbers of prisoners were taken, wounded and unwounded, and five Prussian regiments have been identified. The Prussian Guard has always suffered from British troops as by some dire fatality. At Ypres, at Contalmaison, in several of the Somme battles, they were cut to pieces. But this ma.s.sacre at Lagnicourt is the worst episode in their history, and it will be remembered by the German people as a black and fearful thing.

VII

THE TERRORS OF THE SCARPE

APRIL 23

The battle of Arras has entered into its second phase--that is to say, into a struggle harder than the first days of the battle on April 9, when by a surprise, following great preparations, we gained great successes all along the line.

This morning, shortly before five o'clock, English, Welsh, and Scottish troops made new and strong a.s.saults east of Arras upon the German line between Gavrelle, Gumappe, and Fontaine-lez-Croisilles, which is the last switch-line on this part of the Front between us and the main Hindenburg line. It has been hard fighting everywhere, for the enemy was no longer uncertain of the place where we should attack him. As soon as the battle of Arras started it was clear to him that we should deliver our next blow when we had moved forward our guns upon this "Oppy" line, as we call it, which protects the Hindenburg positions north and south of Vitry-en-Artois. His troops were told to expect our attack at any moment, and to hold on at all costs of life. To meet our strength the enemy brought up many new batteries, which he placed in front of the Hindenburg line, and close behind the Oppy line, and ma.s.sed large numbers of machine-guns in the villages, trenches, and emplacements, from which he could sweep our line of advance by direct and enfilade fire. These machine-guns were thick in the ruins of Roeux, just north of the River Scarpe; in Pelves, just south of it, in two small woods called Bois du Sart and Bois du Vert, immediately facing Monchy, on the slope of the hill; and in and about the village of Gumappe, which we had a.s.saulted and entered twice before. Many German snipers, men of good marksmanship and tried courage, were placed all about in sh.e.l.l-holes with orders to pick off our officers and men, and the enemy's gunners had registered all our positions so that they were ready to drop down a heavy barrage directly our men made a sign of attacking. For some days after the second day of the battle of Arras they had fired a great many sh.e.l.ls along and behind our front lines in order to shake the nerve of our troops, and had poured fire into Monchy-on-the-Hill after its capture by our cavalry and infantry during those deadly hours of fighting already described. It was only to be expected that this second phase of the battle of Arras should be extremely hard. For our men it is a battle to the death. Fighting is in progress at all the points attained by our troops, and there is an ebb and flow of men--beaten back for a while by intensity of fire, but attacking again and getting forward. It is certain that Gavrelle is ours (thus breaking the Oppy line north of the River Scarpe); that our men are beyond Gumappe, on the south of the Scarpe, though the enemy is still fighting at this hour of the afternoon in or about that village; and that on the extreme right of the attack the enemy has suffered disaster north of Croisilles, and has lost large numbers of men in killed and prisoners.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Line on April 23, 1917_]

At the outset of the attack the enemy showed himself ready to meet it with a fierce resistance. Last night was terribly cold, and our troops lying out in sh.e.l.l-holes or in shallow trenches dug a day or two ago, suffered from this exposure. The Scottish troops of the 15th Division on the south of the Scarpe had fought in the first days' battles of Arras, and, with English troops of the 37th, had gone forward to Monchy and into the storm-centre of the German fire. Some of the men I met to-day had been buried by German crumps, and had been dug out again, and as they lay waiting for the hour of attack sh.e.l.ls fell about them and the sky was aflame with flashes of our bombs. The men craved for something hot to drink. "I would have given all the money I have for a cup of tea," said one of them. But they nibbled dry biscuits and waited for the dawn, and hoped they would not be too numb when the light came to get up and walk. The light came very pale over the earth, and with it the signal to attack. Our bombardment had been steady all through the night, and then broke into hurricane fire. As soon as our men left the trenches our gunners laid down a barrage in front of them, and made a moving wall of sh.e.l.ls ahead of them--a frightful thing to follow, but the safest if the men did not go too quick or fail to distinguish between the line of German sh.e.l.ls and our own. It was not easy to distinguish, for our men had hardly risen from the sh.e.l.l-holes and ditches before the enemy's barrage started, and all the ground about them was vomiting up fountains of mud and sh.e.l.l-splinters. At the same time there came above all the noise of sh.e.l.l-fire a furnace-blast of machine-guns. Machine-gunners in Roeux and Pelves, in the two small woods in front of Monchy, and in the ground about Gumappe were slashing all the slopes and roads below Monchy-on-the-Hill.

"It was the most awful machine-gun fire I have heard," said a young Gordon this morning, as he came back with a bullet in his hip. "The beggars were ready for us, and made it very hot. But we folk went on, those of us who weren't hit quickly, and made an attack on the village of Gumappe."

"The enemy dropped his barrage on to us mighty quick," said a Worcestershire lad, "but we managed, most of us, to get past his crumps.

It took a lot of dodging in sh.e.l.l-holes, and the worst was his machine-gun fire, which was terrific."

Below Monchy the enemy was in trenches defended by enfilade fire from redoubts along the Cambrai road, and when our English troops swept down on them the Germans ran at once up their own slope to the cover of a wood called Bois du Sart. Only one officer and two men remained, and they were taken prisoner, and I saw them being marched back under escort. The officer was a young Bavarian without a hat; he bore himself very jauntily, though his face was white and he was covered with dirt.

The Worcesters and Hampshires of the 29th Division, farther north and just south of the Scarpe, were held up for some time by the intensity of the machine-gun fire, and before getting on had to wait the arrival of a Tank which was crawling up by way of the lone copse. They were then fighting heavily about Shrapnel-and-Bayonet Trench, and afterwards made their way forward again under heavy fire, and pa.s.sed a number of German snipers lying in sh.e.l.l-holes to right and left of them. They were swept by machine-gun fire and heavily counter-attacked.

To the north of the River Scarpe our progress was quicker, and Scottish battalions of the 15th Division made their advance towards Roeux by way of a fortified farm and chemical works, in which machine-guns were hidden. Round about here the enemy lost very heavily. In trying to escape from the ruins of the farm many of them were killed and lay in a row to the left of the place. In the chemical works those who had not escaped before our men were upon them surrendered at once. The attack and capture of Gavrelle, which broke the Oppy line, was the best thing done on the left of the attack. This is important ground for future operations.

Gumappe, to the south of the river, is the scene of the most severe attacks and counter-attacks; and it is clear that the enemy sets a great price on this heap of bricks, because of its position on the Cambrai road. Before this morning it has been the scene of fierce encounters; and to-day the 3rd Bavarian Division (which has taken the place of the 18th Division, at whom they had jeered for losing so many prisoners in recent battles) is at close quarters with our men; and round about the village there is deadly hand-to-hand fighting. The trenches here are full of Germans, and the enemy has sent up supports.

The 101st Pomeranian Regiment, belonging to the 35th Reserve Division, surrendered in solid ma.s.ses to our men in the neighbourhood of Fontaine-lez-Croisilles. For several days they had suffered under our bombardment, and it so shook their nerve that as soon as our troops advanced they came out of their dug-outs in the support trenches--the front line was not held at all--and gave themselves to our men in blocks of 500 without any attempt to fight. On this ground between the Cojeul and Sense rivers, where our advance was on a curved line following the shape of the rising ground, we took at least 1200 prisoners and a battery of field-guns.

It is fortunate--in counting the high price of the battle--that many of our wounded are only lightly touched by shrapnel and machine-gun bullets. I saw these walking wounded coming back; tired, brave men, who bore their pain with most stoic endurance, so that there was hardly a groan to be heard among them. Now and again overhead was the shrill whine of an approaching sh.e.l.l, "Whistling Percy" by name, but they paid no heed after their great escape from the far greater peril. They formed up in a long queue outside the dressing-station, where doctors waited for them, and where there was a hot drink to be had. They were covered with mud, and were too weary and spent to talk. That long line of silent, wounded men will always remain in my memory.

Outside in the sunlight, waiting their turn to enter the dressing-station, some of the men lay down on the bank in queer, distorted att.i.tudes very like death, and slept there. Others came hobbling with each arm round the neck of the stretcher-bearers, or led forward blind, gropingly. It was the whimper of these blind boys and the agony on their faces which was most tragic in all this tragedy, those and the men smashed about the face and head so that only their eyes stared through white masks. Near by were German prisoners standing against the sunlit wall, pale, sick, and hungry-looking men, utterly dejected. A German aeroplane flew overhead on the way behind our lines, shot at all the way by our anti-aircraft guns, but very bold. Our kite-balloons, white as snow-clouds in the blue sky, stared over the battlefield where our men are still fighting in the midst of great sh.e.l.l-fire.

APRIL 25

This battle which is still in progress east of Arras is developing rather like the early days of the Somme battles, when our men fought stubbornly to gain or regain a few hundred yards of trenches in which the enemy resisted under the cover of great gun-fire, and to which he sent up strong bodies of supporting troops to drive our men out by counter-attacks. In the ground east of Monchy, between the Scarpe and the Sense rivers, the situation is exactly like that, and, as I said yesterday, the line of battle has ebbed to and fro in an astounding way, British and German troops fighting forwards and backwards over the same ground with alternating success.

An attack made by Scottish troops of the 15th Division yesterday afternoon, and by English troops of the 29th at 3.30 this morning, re-established our line on this side of the two woods called Bois du Vert and Bois du Sart, and on the farther side of Gumappe. Parties of British troops who had been cut off and were believed to be in the hands of the enemy were recovered yesterday, having held out in a most gallant way in isolated positions. Among them were some of the Argylls and men of the Middles.e.x Regiment. Our barrage preceding an infantry attack actually swept over them, and they gave themselves up for lost, but escaped from the British sh.e.l.ls and the German sh.e.l.ls which burst all round them and seemed in compet.i.tion for their lives.

A similar case happened with a party of Worcester men recovered last night. They were cut off in a small copse, and lay quiet there for several days, surrounded by the enemy. They had their iron rations with them, and lived on these until they were gone. They were then starving and suffering great agony from lack of water. But still they would not surrender, and last night were rewarded for their endurance by seeing the enemy retire before the advancing waves of English troops.

The enemy is suffering big losses, but is replacing them each time by fresh battalions. The Fourth Division of the Prussian Guards has now been brought up against us, among several other new divisions. They continue to show determination to hold us back from a nearer approach to the Hindenburg line in spite of the frightful casualties already suffered. There have been no fewer than eight counter-attacks already upon the village of Gavrelle, and not one of them has reached our men, but they have been broken and dispersed.

In the first counter-attack upon our line opposite Monchy, between 2000 and 3000 Germans left the Bois du Vert, but after many hundreds had fallen retired to reorganize. The second attack was in greater numbers and rolled back our line for a time, but has now been forced to retire to its old position in the woods, which we keep continually under intense fire, so that much slaughter must be there.

Our guns never cease their labouring night and day, and are sh.e.l.ling the enemy's infantry positions, batteries, lines of communication, rail-heads, and cross-roads, so that no troops may move except under the menace of death or mutilation. Nevertheless, faced by great peril to his main defensive lines, the enemy is ma.s.sing troops rapidly for battle on even a bigger scale. Our own men are pa.s.sing through fiery ordeals with that courage which is now known to the whole world, so that I need not labour to describe it--a patient courage in great hardships, self-sacrifice in the midst of great perils, sane and unbroken in spite of horrors upon which the imagination dare not dwell.

From the colonel of the Worcesters of the 29th Division I heard to-day a narrative which would surely make the angels weep, but though just out of the infernal ordeal he told it calmly, and his hand only trembled slightly as he pointed on his trench-map to positions which his men had taken and where they had most suffered. His story deals with only a small section of the battle front, and all the fighting which he directed had for its object certain trenches which would mean nothing if I gave their names. (They were Strong and Windmill Trench.)

His battalion headquarters were in a dug-out actually in the front trench line from which his men attacked, and it was lucky, for after the troops had gone forward the enemy's barrage fell behind them and destroyed the ground. The colonel, with his adjutant, his sergeant-major, and his servant, shared this battle headquarters with the commanding officer and staff of the Hampshires, but not for long.

Heavy German crumps were smashing round them, and the enemy's barrage-fire swept up and down searching for human life. The colonel of the Hampshires was wounded, and two of his officers were killed. The colonel of the Worcesters, who was left to record this history, could tell very little of what was happening to his men there in the battle less than a thousand yards away. A wounded sergeant came back and said that the left company was holding out against German counter-attacks.

Later two young officers came back to Pick-and-Shrapnel Trench with a party of men and said they had been ordered to retire by a strange captain. The colonel rallied the men, and they went back and retook Windmill Trench near by. Messages came down that men were half mad for lack of water. The colonel sent up water by a carrying-party, but he believes that they delivered it to the enemy, who had crept up through the darkness which had now fallen. All through the day on each side of this Worcestershire colonel great bodies of troops were fighting forward under intense sh.e.l.l-fire. He saw the enemy's ma.s.sed counter-attacks slashed by our shrapnel and machine-gun fire, and our field-batteries galloping to forward positions, but he could see nothing of his own men after they had once gone forward down the sloping ground. His runners were killed or fell senseless from sh.e.l.l-shock. He himself was buried by a sh.e.l.l and dug out again by his sergeant-major. In the night he was left quite alone, surrounded by dead.

That is one experience in the great battle, and thousands of our men endured and are enduring dreadful things in the fierce fighting and under intense fire. Once out of it, they are calm and self-controlled, as I saw many of them to-day just as they had been relieved, and the strongest expression they use is, "It is very hot, sir," or "I didn't think I should come back."

The wounded are marvellous. The lightly wounded have a long way to walk, hobbling for miles down unsafe roads. Many of them walked back through Monchy when it was a flaming torch. Weary and dazed they came to the casualty clearing-station, not even now beyond the range of sh.e.l.l-fire, so that men who have escaped from the battlefields, waiting to have their wounds dressed, hear the old shrill whistle of the approaching menace, but do not care. It is only by such courage that our men can gain any ground from the enemy, and it is such courage that beats back all those heavy counter-attacks which the enemy is now hurling against us up by Gavrelle and by Monchy-on-the-Hill.

VIII

THE BACKGROUND OF BATTLE

APRIL 30

There has been but little time lately to describe the scene of war or to chronicle the small human episodes of this great battle between Lens and St.-Quentin, with its storm-centre at Arras, where men are fighting in ma.s.s, killing in ma.s.s, dying in ma.s.s. Some day one of our soldiers now fighting--some young man with a gift of words--will write for all time the story of all this: the beauty and the ugliness and the agony of it, the colour and the smell and the movement of it, with intimate and pa.s.sionate remembrance. It is a memorable battle-picture in modern history, and in the ma.s.s of hundreds of thousands of men, obedient to the high command, which uses them as parts of the great war machine, is the individual with his own separate experience and initiative, with his sense of humour and his suffering, and his courage and his fear.