by Peter Hart
We made our way back, joining Colonel Thackeray and about seventy survivors in a reserve trench. Here we set up our Lewis gun with tragic results. In succession ten of my mates were killed and it looked as if my own turn was next. Whilst at the gun, one bullet grazed the side of my face, near the eye. Another hit the stock. But the bullets were not coming from the direction our gun was facing. After our tenth comrade had been killed, one of our chaps thought he saw a slight movement in a tree, some distance to our rear. We gave the tree a burst, and out dropped a German sniper. A brave man, he must have crept into the wood in the darkness of the previous night, and set himself up, well hidden, in the branches. I am sure he would have known that his chances of survival were very slight. I was indeed lucky not to be his next victim.7
Private Frank Marillier, 2nd Battalion, South African Regiment, South African Brigade, 9th Division
Although by this time exhausted, running out of food and water, the increasingly shell-shocked South Africans clung on to their makeshift shallow trenches. As each hour passed there were fewer men left standing to face the next German counter-attack.
D Coy retired without passing up any word, so did those on their left. My orders were to hold on. I was on point of salient and furthest force pushed out. A and C Companies on my right not being dug in were scattered—one platoon D Company did well on my left. I used 4th Regt in reserve trench as reinforcements. Ammunition scarce. Mud caused ammunition to be useless—also wounded men’s rifles jammed with mud. No cleaning material—all consumed. Two guns, one Lewis and one Maxim knocked out. Our own field guns killed and wounded many of us. Difficulty owing to this to extend to my left. D Coy retired when the attack came at probably 5 p.m. or later; however beat Germans off. Many killed 7 yards from my trenches. Remnants of A and C Companies overpowered. I learnt this after heat of attack abated, with machine guns enfilading us from my right. By passing up five rounds at a time from each man I kept machine guns and one Lewis gun going sparingly. Killed many Germans. I divided my front i.e. alternate men facing alternate fronts. Sent bombing party and patrol under officer to try and clear my right and get away to retire to Waterlot Farm or our old Regimental Headquarters. German held trenches at latter place and machine guns up trenches on my right. Determined to hold on.8
Captain Medlicort, 3rd Battalion, South African Regiment, South African Brigade, 9th Division
Despite all their valiant efforts, Captain Medlicort and his men were finally overrun by the Germans at dawn on 19 July.
Exhausted machine gun ammunition. Drove off attack from wood but had to chuck it soon after 8 a.m. Handed back, sorry to say, all German prisoners captured during the day. I got not a wink of sleep for four nights. Could not sleep in the night of the 18th. Got Lieutenants Guard and Thomas in a safe place (both wounded) with German prisoners. I was satisfied at our marksmanship, so many dead Germans round us in the wood. I was too busy waiting for the moment of attack which was maturing during the day. The enemy shell fire was chiefly 5.9-in. Too intense to think of retiring. The Germans were rattled with our gunfire. Our men, who at that time owing to want of water and sleep were cold and stiff, were calm and had a ‘don’t care a damn’ appearance.9
Captain Medlicort, 3rd Battalion, South African Regiment, South African Brigade, 9th Division
Amongst the thoroughly exhausted prisoners was Private Victor Wepener.
We were shelled from all sides. At times men were killed next to me while I was talking to them. Though I always had ammunition, the rain and mud got into our rifle bolts and caused them to jam. When the Germans eventually overran us, I was impressed by a very aristocratic officer who wore a cap instead of a steel helmet. He kept his hand over his pistol holster whilst we ‘remnants’ were being collected in an open glade. A German soldier with a bandaged head and his rifle and bayonet slung over his shoulder called me, ‘Kamerad’. I didn’t quite know what to say as I didn’t fancy being his comrade. The German soldiers on average were jolly good chaps. I then helped carry Lieutenant Guard who had been shot in the leg. Some of the wounded had to be left behind. I was one of the few to escape unscathed. We were then marched through their lines and we saw many Germans lying there waiting to attack. A couple of our chaps carried a German with a stomach wound on a groundsheet. Our artillery opened up and we were amused to see our guards ducking away and running for cover. After what we had been through we didn’t worry about shell bursts anymore.10
Private Victor Wepener, 3rd Battalion, South African Regiment, South African Brigade, 9th Division
Colonel Thackeray and the scattered remnants of the 3rd South Africans were left clinging on to the last line of defence running along Prince’s Street and then bending back along Buchanan Street. Grimly hanging on by their fingertips to just a small corner of the wood they waited for the long promised relief. Time and time again they were promised assistance but nothing concrete resulted. To add injury to insult the South Africans were constantly plagued by British shells dropping by accident or design right into the wood.
Urgent. My men are on their last legs. I cannot keep some of them awake. They drop with their rifles in hand asleep in spite of heavy shelling. We are expecting an attack. Even that cannot keep some of them from dropping down. Food and water has not reached us for two days—though we have managed on rations of those killed, but must have water. I am alone with Phillips who is wounded and only a couple of sergeants. Please relieve these men today without fail as I fear they have come to the end of their endurance.11
Lieutenant Colonel E. F.Thackeray, 3rd Battalion, South African Regiment, South African Brigade, 9th Division
At last the news came the men had been praying for. The 53rd Brigade of the 18th Division was temporarily attached to the 9th Division and duly sent forward to relieve the beleaguered South Africans. When the South African Brigade finally emerged from what remained of the wood there were only 780 of the 3,153 men present to answer the roll call. The South Africans would never forget Delville Wood.
So it was that on 19 July it fell to the 53rd Brigade to move forward without prior reconnaissance to make an attempt to recapture the southern half of Delville Wood. It is the sheer ubiquity of such attacks that gave them an aura of futility and horror that resounds to this day. This time it was the turn of Private Thomas Jennings of the 6th Royal Berkshires to go forward with his friends into the maw of battle in Delville Wood. Just reaching the wood was a trial of biblical proportions.
Shovels were in the proportion of five to one of picks. A pile of these were passed along the line, and all of us replacements found ourselves with a pick stuck down our back under our haversack. This wasn’t by chance for the older members of the Berkshires had a spade, a much lighter and easier tool—we live and learn. There was only one entrance to the wood on the south side and the way from Longueval to this entrance was under direct machine-gun fire. The 8th Norfolks went in first, then the 10th Essex and the 6th Berks in the centre. At the sound of a whistle we moved forward. It is amazing, indeed astounding, that in spite of the enemy’s barrage of HE, we went on in columns of four. It seemed ages before the order to thin out in extended order was given. We now passed the field gunners who were stripped to the waist, and gained the cover of the sunken road. We stopped there for a while, then went on a yard or so, then stopped again, and so on. It seemed such slow progress, it must be that A Company was finding it difficult to push forward, they were in front. As we crouched against the bank there came from out of the blue a terrific explosion, the air was thick with black smoke and a thousand bells rang in my head. When everything cleared I saw in front of me a soldier lying on his back in a pool of blood from a gaping wound. He called out, ‘Mother, take ’em away, take ’em away!’ He died a few minutes later. I then realised that another chap in front of me didn’t move. I almost touched him and I could see that his water bottle was dripping water tinged with blood. A further look at him told me he was dead, indeed I heard his last gasp. My feelings were
awful; this was just plain murder. To make things even worse a dozen or so soldiers were crying and staggering about with shell shock.12
Private Thomas Jennings, 6th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, 53rd Brigade, 18th Division
As Jennings neared the front, the shelling steadily increased and the awful sights and sounds pressed deeply on his bewildered senses.
We moved on again and reached a communication trench running alongside a road and a wood the other side. A couple of Jerry soldiers passed us on the way back; these were prisoners, and scared to hell, making signs that they were not officers. It still seemed slow progress as we made our way along that trench. Shrapnel pegged us down somewhat and the evidence of this was the ‘ping’ on the tin hat. As Captain Hudson was talking to the regimental sergeant major, a German sniper saw them, killed the RSM and put a bullet through the captain’s tin hat. Looking above the trench at times I could see stretcher bearers with their burdens lying dead. The red cross on their sleeves didn’t protect them from being killed. Slow progress was made again along the trench with the dead and dying all around us. We halted many times for several minutes. On one occasion I found myself squatting on a corpse that was covered with earth, except for his head, which was minus his scalp and hair worn away by the traffic of heavy boots.13
Private Thomas Jennings, 6th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, 53rd Brigade, 18th Division
At last they reached the end of the trench where it met a road. Ahead of them lay the terrible tangle of Delville Wood.
Our captain was there to give us the signal when to go. I shall always remember his words, ‘Follow your sergeant—go!’ The sergeant was a tall heavily built chap, who shot across the road as if from a gun. Each man ran singly under withering machine-gun fire and shelling, which increased in severity once the attack had been launched. I followed suit, but lost my sergeant and myself in the wood. I wandered around for a moment or so and then dived into a shell hole. That action didn’t give me much consolation. The thoughts that ran through my head were, ‘If the Germans saw me there, would they take me prisoner or lob a couple of hand grenades at me?’ I was duly relieved of these thoughts by seeing a couple of our lads approaching and they asked me what I was doing. I had no answer, but was glad to get out of that hole and set forward in the direction we thought we should go. With a bit of luck we found a platoon of khaki uniformed soldiers in a waist-high trench. On speaking to them we learned that they were South Africans. One of them told us that he had been a Boer soldier and fought against us in that war in 1901. He proved to be quite a decent chap. All the time the din, the racket and the fearful noise continued, machine gun and gunfire, trees crashing down from HE. We were then prompted by our South African friends to go in the direction they thought we might find our company of the 6th Berks. We did eventually find them on the extreme edge of the wood with a mound of earth in front of their heads and equipment piled in front of that. This was the only quick way to protect their heads against rifle fire; it was all bewildering to me.14
Private Thomas Jennings, 6th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, 53rd Brigade, 18th Division
Having reached the wood they were confronted by the usual problems of fighting in a woodland, smashed by shell fire and haunted by ambushing snipers. The Berkshires had no Colonel Frank Maxwell VC to seize the situation by the scruff of the neck. Thwarted by the Germans in front and on either side, they were cut off by the barrage line of German shells falling behind them from any chance of reinforcements or supplies.
There was great difficulty with regard to water, the only well in the wood was close to where the enemy was strongest, and we received no food supplies the whole of the time we were in the wood. In parts of the wood, patrols, and even single men of the opposing forces were hunted and stalked, one after the other. The air was thick with a horrible stench from dead bodies and the pungent odour of gas. The ‘Devil’s Wood’ was indeed a terrible place. Nightfall came and with it a silence of a kind. No gunfire, just the occasional crack of a rifle. We moved around like ghosts in the darkness, which gave the fellows an opportunity to search the dead for their water bottles. Sergeant Bygraves, one of our senior NCOs, crept over to a severely wounded German prisoner to give him a drink of water. That poor Jerry had been propped up against a tree for at least thirty hours or more. Whenever one of us got near him he feebly put his hands up as a token of surrender. I remember the aide-de-camp to the commander of 53rd Brigade coming up to the front line to see how things were progressing. When this one-armed Guards officer had seen Lieutenant Colonel B. G. Clay, he came across the wounded German. Turning to me he said, ‘Shoot the bastard!’ I thought to myself, ‘He has a revolver, why doesn’t he do it?’ This staff officer then went on his way without waiting for me to carry out his order. As no one else pursued the matter, I decided not to do his dirty work and walked away apprehensively.15
Private Thomas Jennings, 6th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, 53rd Brigade, 18th Division
They could get no further and their position remained extremely tenuous. Finally, having achieved nothing, they were eventually relieved on the night of 21 July. Their brigadier summed up the operation in a lacerating report that did not mince its words as it lashed home the sheer futility of the ‘gesture’ his 53rd Brigade and the men of the 6th Royal Berkshires had made. The tactical problem of taking Delville Wood was almost insuperable without a large-scale general advance that encompassed the wood. Without that the only effective way of clearing the wood was by utilising the power of the artillery, but once occupied the victors were equally vulnerable to the same treatment.
The Germans, too, were suffering as they launched costly counterattacks that had little real purpose, but their tactical naivety faded into insignificance beside the confused, headstrong, wilful stupidity of some of the British attacks, which cost the Germans only ammunition to repel. Not only did the continuation of such futile British piecemeal attacks leach away the fighting strength of the Fourth Army to no purpose, but the feeling of events spiralling out of control was exacerbated by an unfortunate break in the weather that brought rain and dull overcast skies. This hampered the work of the Royal Flying Corps, led to further delays and gave more invaluable time to the Germans. Minor attacks could be defeated with the defences and resources in place, but the Germans were in a race against time to knit together the integrated defence they would need to hold back another pile-driven assault. Every day counted.
23–29 July 1916:
The plans for the next major attack envisioned a thrust forward of both the Fourth and Reserve Armies in conjunction with the French in the early morning of 23 July. Of all the valuable lessons that could be gleaned from the successes achieved on 14 July it seems perverse that General Sir Douglas Haig and Rawlinson should, at least on the surface, have drawn little more than a near-superstitious belief that a night attack could deflect the power of massed German machine guns and artillery. The skilful tactical use of the cloak of darkness to amass and deploy troops to secure a stunning surprise had indeed been a vital component in the success achieved at the Battle of Bazentin Ridge. Yet the crushing preliminary bombardment was far more crucial in its ability to smash the German front lines, destroying the machine guns and the battery-gun positions. If they were not dealt with then the Germans retained the potential, whatever the degree of visibility, to open a deadly fire on previously determined fixed lines and pre-registered targets. Furthermore, it was unfortunate for the British artillery that the next lines of German trenches were tucked away on the reverse slopes of the low ridges, and hence far better concealed from direct observation man had been the case before 14 July. The British gunners were heavily dependent on artillery registration from the BE2cs of the RFC for their accuracy and the weather had severely hampered flying. When the sun finally re-emerged on 20 July it left far too little time for the hundreds of guns to be registered before the preliminary bombardment began in earnest on 22 July.
The Allied
High Command was under pressure while preparing for the next stage in the offensive, for speed was necessary if the Germans were not further to consolidate their positions. In bowing to this imperative plans were conceived, considered, approved and disseminated in excessive haste. In these circumstances it is not surprising that when the reconnaissance flights of the RFC brought back photographs that clearly delineated a newly dug German trench stretching forward of the switch line in front of Bazentin-le-Petit the High Command failed to act in a considered or logical fashion. The new line, unimaginatively christened the ‘Intermediate Trench’ had not been catered for in the original plans but at that late stage all that could be thought of on the spur of the moment was to bring forward the time of attack in the affected sector to 0030 on 23 July. The Intermediate Trench would be rushed at that time, after which the presumed ‘victors’ would join in the main assault at 0130 on the switch line that still lay ahead of them. A similar approach was adopted to deal with Wood Trench, which interfered with the main plans for the attack in the sector between High Wood and Delville Wood, although this time the attack would start even earlier at 2200 on 22 July.
A further complication was provided by the necessity of the XIII Corps to hammer out a compatible assault plan with the neighbouring French, which had resulted in a negotiated start time of 0340 on 23 July. Yet worse was to follow. Perhaps sensibly, the French were anxious not to be ‘rushed’ and at the last moment they announced that they would not in fact be ready to attack until the next day—24 July. Rawlinson was thrown into an invidious position, but reluctantly decided that the British had gone too far down the line to postpone the attack. He therefore reluctantly accepted that the right of his line would be attacking towards Guillemont with their right flanks exposed and, as it was by then too late to change the orders, they would still go over at the anomalous start time of 0340. Last minute changes generated their own confusions and in the event not all the assault divisions along the line received their final start times correctly before it was simply too late.
