Navvying in no-man’s-land was much more dangerous. Stray fusillades of machine-gun fire and roving enemy patrols posed deadly dangers. Silence and secrecy were essential. Rattling equipment, jangling coils of wire, the dull thuds of mallets, and the crisp ring of spade and pick striking metal or stone were dead giveaways.76 Men spoke in whispers. They stifled coughs and never sparked up a tab (cigarette) lest they invite a bullet. Private England set the scene: ‘Either side might open up with machine-gun fire. Patrols of three or four men would go out to locate enemy posts or to get a prisoner, or to mend wire. Verey lights [also known as flares] would go up and you needed to Freeze — still.’77 Private Coom remembered enemy bullets ‘hissed past in the dark like bees.’78 Captain Upcott recalled an incident where ‘after getting all my working parties in, I let off my Lewis guns on the German parties; to judge by the squealing, we hit something out in No Man’s Land.’79 Digging assembly trenches for the attack and posts for listening to or observing enemy activity were tasks often spread over several nights, and came with increased risk of being rumbled by the enemy, as Rifleman Barber remembered:
Never have I dug so quickly or so quietly. Within an hour we were down three or four feet. . . . The next night we went back to build a fire step & fill sandbags for a parapet. This was as nerve wracking as the first night. There was a fear that the enemy might have occupied our new trench & were preparing a welcome. However, all was well.80
And then, said Private Brookes, losing track of time could be equally fatal:
We had left the going out [to an observation post in no-man’sland] rather late & in quickly increasing daylight a Jerry machinegun opened up making us do even time over the last 100 yards. As I slid into the trench some (not much) of the rum [he was carrying] was spilled and, although I thought I had done rather well not to lose the lot, it was a few hours before my ‘bloody clumsiness’ was forgiven & forgotten.81
Such working parties were screened by infantrymen lying doggo (in hiding) at intervals in long, rank grass, to thwart German patrols bent on disrupting progress and inflicting casualties. Private Aust lay 100 yards from the enemy parapet: ‘At first [I] thought about all the horrible possibilities. Amazingly, after a few minutes lying there I found myself nodding to sleep and when I felt the N.C.O.’s hand press on my back (the signal to withdraw) I nearly jumped out of my skin.’82 Few of the soldiers in no-man’s-land by night had ever felt so thrillingly alive as when they lay there, exposed and within an ace of death.
It was a sensation those on no-quarter raiding parties stealing across no-man’s-land knew well. Some of these parties were supported by artillery fire, which pared away wire and isolated specific sections of German trench to facilitate the raiders’ entry. Others were not, and relied on stealth, wire cutters and Bangalore torpedo explosives to get through. In the period 1 April–23 June there were at least 18 night-time raids noted by Fourth Army, these endeavours by 7th, 8th, 19th (Western), 29th, 31st, 32nd, 34th, 36th (Ulster) and 48th (South Midland) divisions taking place up and down the line and usually around the midnight hour. The objectives of the after-dark cutthroats who took part in these raids were capturing or killing German soldiers, gathering intelligence, destroying hostile defences, tossing bombs down the entrances of dugouts and generally causing disruption to enemy garrisons. Most raids involved about 50 soldiers, but the number depended on the task at hand. It was a brutal business. Clubs, hatchets, pistols, grenades and knuckledusters were the weapons in vogue, along with the ubiquitous rifle and bayonet. Fists did the trick too, as Sergeant Richardson recalled after nabbing one prisoner who came too close to be bayonetted: ‘I closed with my foe, seized his throat after throwing him, and with knee on his chest, began to throttle him. It is hard to kill an enemy when he is already vanquished, so I stood over him.’83 This man and other prisoners were raced back across no-man’s-land and interrogated; others resisted and were shot dead. From these raids and innumerable smaller patrols, a detailed assessment of XIV Reserve Corps’ composition, command structures, fighting worth and morale was worked up by Fourth Army intelligence and circulated but, alarmingly, very little reference was made in this document to the numerous dugouts and wire entanglements that most raiders mentioned in their debriefing reports.84
Opposing trench lines were usually 250–500 yards apart, but this depended on the lay of the land. At La Boisselle, on a corner of ground still scarred today from shell and mine blasts, known then and since as the Glory Hole, the trenches were a few yards apart. Now it is a fenced-off grass paddock filled with gorse bushes and the occasional stray cat stalking field mice; back then it was all about chaos, corpses and snipers. It smelled of sour earth, fly-blown flesh and cordite. The trenches at the Glory Hole, a most hated and feared part of the line, were close enough for the enemy to be heard coughing, chatting and stomping along duckboards. Private England was there, part of a three-man team holding an isolated post:
Dead silence. Every time one’s ground sheet rustled it sounded like thunder. I was having an uncomfortable doze huddled up in the corner by the grenades when Bill Daniels who was on watch woke me with an urgent hoarse whisper,
‘England give me one of those ruddy bombs.’
‘What for?’ sleepily.
‘There’s a bloody Hun in the front fork [of a nearby enemy trench].’
So I passed him one, and he threw it.85
It turned out the ‘bloody Hun’ was Captain Bernard Ayre, 8th Norfolks, on a one-man epic into the German line. Ayre escaped with a peppering of shrapnel. Later, England and Daniels bumped into him and were greeted ‘with the broadest of grins and a “Good morning.”’86 Twenty-four-year-old Ayre, along with three others from his family in the Newfoundland Regiment, was killed on 1 July. He is buried at Carnoy Military Cemetery. Daniels fell two years later, the 34-year-old’s body lost. England died aged 103 in Yarmouth, with the memory of his longdead friends lingering until the end.
Attitudes towards German soldiers were complex. Few encountered living enemy personnel; the Germans were shadowy figures across no-man’s-land devoid of names, faces and personalities. ‘My feeling towards the Germans was that they were just fighting for the Fatherland as I was for England,’ said Driver Charles Garrand, RFA, expressing a common opinion.87 Most realised their fragile, hardship-laden existence was shared by the enemy, which led to transient periods of empathy.88 Referring to the rescue of a wounded soldier from no-man’s-land during which no shot was fired, Lieutenant Kirkland-Laman said that ‘chivalry is not altogether dead.’89 That did not stop some from shouting abuse at the German trenches to provoke a reaction and gain targets for British snipers.90 ‘Come over comrade, we want to make peace,’ yelled one British soldier in good German across no-man’s-land.91 It was an unlikely invitation. Fear of the enemy remained constant, particularly for those in no-man’s-land. ‘With such an experience I became scared stiff,’ wrote Private William Corbett, 15th Royal Scots, of narrowly dodging a German soldier out between the lines one night.92 Outright hatred was rare unless sparked by some personal grievance, usually the killing of a close friend or family member. One who demonstrated such animosity was future Victoria Cross (VC) winner Captain Wilfrith Elstob, 16th Manchesters, who grieved for several dead friends and ‘had more than normal aversion to “The Bosche.”’93 Opinions could shift quickly. At one stage Private Aust said it was ‘difficult to hate’ the enemy, but he later confessed to screaming ‘Bastards, Bastards, Bastards’ when he saw British soldiers killed.94 ‘The Boche’, ‘Hun’ or ‘Jerry’ was generally regarded as just doing his job, but the individual British soldier’s attitude very much depended on his morale, personality and experience.
Morale and the shifting sands of its two interrelated components, mood and spirit, were affected by all manner of factors. Mood was transitory and was influenced by weather, food and the physical condition of troops. Spirit related to the willingness of soldiers to continue fighting, which had a lot to do with their mood, outlook on lif
e, motivations for fighting, belief in the purpose of being at war and their view of both junior and senior commanders. Falls in mood and spirit could be charted by a rise in the underlying number of disciplinary cases formally dealt with by military law.
There were, for example, 30,295 field-general courts martial convened by the British army between October 1915 and September 1916. These produced 26,581 convictions. Most were for drunkenness, absence without leave, miscellaneous military offences, disobedience and insubordination.95 Forty-eight British soldiers were executed on the Western Front between August 1915 and June 1916.96 Revealingly, however, the number of soldiers sent to military prison in February–June 1916 was range-bound at 0.9–1.1 per 1000, and in May–June dropped from close to 1.1 per 1000 to about 1.0.97 Concurrently, the total number of soldiers in the British army in France markedly increased. That the underlying number of soldiers locked up in the five months to 1 July barely fluctuated suggests morale was broadly stable and arguably even improved ahead of the Somme.
Minor disciplinary matters were dealt with on the spot by the soldier’s non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and subalterns. These so-called ‘crimes’ could include failing to shave, being dressed untidily, losing equipment and so forth. Chronic offenders were disciplined by company and battalion commanders, as were those whose offence was more serious but not enough to warrant a court martial. Maybe they had given some lip to an officer or been boozed in billets. Usually such actions resulted in a reprimand, confinement to barracks, being docked 28 days’ pay or fined up to 10 shillings, extra guard and fatigues duty, or field punishment. Private John Allsop, 15th West Yorkshires, got two weeks’ Field Punishment No. 1 for objecting to extra fatigue work. ‘Every other day I was chained to a gun carriage or tree for one hour bound hands behind me & padlock & chains to my feet.’98 Sergeant Osborn later recalled how 2nd South Wales Borderers’ NCOs dealt summarily with stragglers on the march to the Somme: ‘Those that hung back the slightest were punched, pushed and kicked to make them keep up. . . . If it had been on Gallipoli there would have been a few fatal accidents that night.’99 The brutality of Osborn’s experience was unusual, and his sentiment rarer still. The business of keeping an army together required strict discipline that was mostly enforced at unit level.
Mood, as noted earlier, was seasonal. In the drier months of August–September 1915 and April–June 1916 the general mood improved and ‘life in the trenches became bearable,’ said Private Brookes.100 This was at least partially inspired by the advent of spring in 1916, wrote Captain Archer-Houblon:
All the spring the Somme country was beautiful. Gorgeous patches of colour lay on every slope, for the derelict land, running wild with weeds, seeded and reseeded, and grew again the same self-sown crops in wanton profusion, and great blazes of scarlet poppies, yellow mustard, blue cornflowers and rich crimson clover ran riot everywhere in the open sun-bathed fields.101
Private William Slater, 18th West Yorkshires, said fine weather helped him to decide his lot was not ‘going to be so terrible after all.’102 But the warmer weather also brought with it more fatigue work. ‘The result,’ wrote Lieutenant Claude Good, 1/7th Sherwood Foresters, ‘was a tired and weary battalion.’103 Banter and wit helped pass the time,104 and mutual support was found within platoons and sections, which were in effect surrogate families. Alert junior commanders quietly monitored their men and kept their minds occupied with one task or another; where they failed, discipline could become problematic. As Corporal George Coppard, Machine Gun Corps, wrote, ‘They [the men] were wholly loyal to their own [platoon] officers, and that was as far as their confidence went.’105 The ebb and flow of mood was part and parcel of active service and prior to the Somme it was robust enough to underpin a keen fighting spirit.
It was a point that senior commanders seized upon. Haig observed the ‘men are in splendid spirits.’106 Rawlinson said his 511,676-strong army, which on 26 June included about 239,991 British infantry in 235 battalions, was up to strength and that the ‘spirit of all ranks is excellent.’107 Brigadier-General John Charteris, Haig’s chief of intelligence, said ahead of the Somme offensive that the ‘spirits of our own men are at their best.’108 These assertions were borne out by the accounts of the men themselves. In early 1916, Lieutenant Capper, for instance, thought there was a ‘general feeling of urgent & purposeful preparation for “The Push” everywhere.’109 He continued: ‘Everybody was optimistic.’110 Private Thomas Frank, 2nd Yorkshires, said morale in his battalion was ‘as high as it was possible to get.’111 Lieutenant Geoffrey Malins, a British army cinematographer, wrote that ahead of the ‘great day’ there was ‘a mysterious something which affected every one’ at General Headquarters, adding that a colonel had told him that ‘my chance to make history was coming.’112 Soldiers’ willingness to continue fighting grew more resolute as the weather warmed and signs of a looming offensive increased.
These tell-tale signs of the offensive were evident to all infantry units revolved out of the line in the period March–June 1916. In the 16 days to 26 June, an additional 58,721 infantrymen in 54 battalions joined Fourth Army.113 It was no surprise that men like Rifleman Barber ‘slowly but surely learned that a big offensive was to be mounted & that we would be engaged.’114 Huge dumps holding all kinds of war materiel sprang up overnight, along with prisoner-of-war cages, medical dressing stations and any number of other posts. Capper said the area was ‘becoming somewhat crowded with infantry being moved into the support area,’115 while Private Thomas Easton, 21st Northumberland Fusiliers, noted Bécourt Wood was ‘a seething mass of life. Artillery transport, every conceivable kind of store was housed within the wood.’116 Lieutenant Moore recorded that ‘guns galore’ and ammunition were brought up nightly.117 Captain David Kelly, Leicestershire Regiment, said the ‘air was now full of rumours of the coming Somme offensive.’118 Lieutenant Malins said initially speculation was rife as to exactly where the attack would take place. ‘Some thought on the northern part of our line, others the centre; others, again, the south. . . . The one topic of conversation was — the coming Great offensive.’119 As preparations continued apace and resources were accumulated, wagging tongues across the ranks soon realised where the offensive would be launched — it was becoming glaringly obvious — but had to guess at when it would begin.
As Capper wrote in late June:
There was definitely a feeling of exhilaration that great events were impending, which might at last break the trench deadlock & even bring the end of the war within sight. I never came across any foreboding of the appalling losses and endless weary [Somme] struggle that finally petered out in the late autumn mud that was to come. I thank God we had no inkling of it. At least our morale was high. We were all set to prove that the ‘New Armies’ could do as well and possibly better than the ‘Old Contemptibles’ [of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914].120
OUT OF THE trenches soldiers were put up in barns holding anything from 10 to 150 men, and in other makeshift accommodation.121 Of the latter, enough tents and wooden-framed huts with tarpaulin coverings to shelter the roughly 15,000 infantrymen of each division were the norm, and were spread across six or seven villages and woods.122 Such huts contained ‘close billets,’ a euphemism for ‘pigeon-hole’ bunks that gave each soldier six feet by two feet to doss down on a sheaf of straw. In some cases the shelter was merely a canvas sheet draped over stacked-up ammunition boxes, and somewhat less frequently sties, which were not always suitable for human habitation. Officers and senior NCOs usually enjoyed billets with beds or camp stretchers in farm houses, living alongside the houses’ French owners. Each soldier settlement had its own piped water supply and permanent staff. These camps were like goldrush towns, minus the lawlessness, and provided basic shelter, food and hygiene, but not much else.
Food behind the lines was trench fare, supplemented with whatever could be bought, scrounged or stolen. Produce such as potatoes, apples and cabbage was available for a price, or to the opportunist
. Private Mawbey spied an unharvested potato field: ‘Entrenching tools were never put to a better use. Cadged a Dixie lid plus some dripping and I was in business.’123 Tenth Essex was on manoeuvres when a skittish hare bolted. ‘One shout sufficed to raise every spade from the attitude of industry to that of destruction,’ recorded the regimental history.124 ‘Very few hares escaped. Of course, it was close season, but — well, there was a war on, and we’d had such a lot of bully and stew; that must be our excuse.’ It was a good deal more difficult to come by whole sheep, pigs, cattle or fowl, which were often squirrelled away by their owners. ‘The [French] inhabitants were convinced that we would clear the place of every kind of animal, and that therefore all live stock was being conveyed to cellars,’ wrote Brigadier-General Henry Croft, 68th Brigade.125 Private Coom sourced extra food from estaminets (small bars), cafés and farm cottages:
We would ask for ‘der oof,’ ‘pom de ter fritz,’ ‘du pang’ & ‘café sivuplay.’ Two eggs fried with a load of chips, a third of French twist loaf & a mug of home ground coffee. All for a franc. . . . There would often be an estaminet & we would have lots of fun & banter with the licensee & his family, supported by ‘vin blanc’ & ‘vin rouge’. That’s what the deadly stuff was called & some of us soon called it ‘plonk’.126
Captain Archer-Houblon remembered that many houses were converted to shops with signage advertising their wares: ‘From eggs and boot-polish, the list of wares for sale would range to “socks, bibles, beer and rosaries”, and the best one was in Albert: “Blood Oranges And Funeral Wreaths.”’127 The whereabouts of brothels was passed by word of mouth: ‘The women cannot keep pace with demand, with the result that large venereal hospitals are established for officers and men in France and England,’ wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Crozier, 9th Royal Irish Rifles. ‘In the towns when the boys are more on their own, going and coming, lounging in clubs, hotels, and estaminets, the danger of excessive drinking must be added to the toll, as drink excites the sexual organs and makes men careless.’128 In no time there was a roaring trade between Haig’s hungry legion and French locals profiting from soldiers who had more than a few different appetites.
First day of the Somme Page 8
