Blood and Thunder

by Alexandra J Churchill

  At Loos, in the action that cost Robin Blacker his life, Harold received a gunshot wound to the hand and was sent home. When he returned to the front in April 1916 it was to join the 2nd Battalion of the regiment. He was wounded again at the height of summer whilst out on patrol when the Germans spotted him and began chucking bombs in his direction. One blew off his spectacles. ‘I thought of you all in the second that the bomb exploded in my face,’ he told his family. The following morning he felt as if he had the mother of all hangovers but he refused to be sent home and re-joined his battalion in time for the September advance.

  Pip Blacker arrived in the area with the 4th Battalion of the Coldstream Guards, a unit of ‘Pioneers’ who, rather than being a fighting unit, took care of all manner of battlefield duties to make life easier for the other battalions. He found himself in Happy Valley. ‘Why Happy? We wondered when we got there.’ He only realised just how many troops were present when night fell. ‘The slope opposite was covered with men … They lay on their waterproof sheets, or huddled around fires. At first there was a medley of voices but they fell into choruses and finally into unison and that wide valley resounded with song … The tempo was slow, the prevailing mood of nostalgic melancholy.’ Pip sat and wondered how many of the voices would still be alive the same time next week.

  The area itself was filthy; buried under a blanket of flies. It resembled a moonscape. ‘You can’t imagine anything like it,’ remarked Henry Dundas. The entire vicinity was a mass of shell holes ‘literally merging one into the other’. Guillemont, he reported, had just simply ceased to exist ‘except as a scarred wound’. Ginchy was no better and ‘My hat!’ he exclaimed. ‘The sights … there ought to be photographs taken of these battlefields and shown in every town or every country in the world and then could the world go to war? I doubt it.’ Harold MacMillan was disgusted by the smell of dead bodies lying in piles about the place but there was military junk everywhere too. All around were dumps of material and ammunition, mostly derelict. ‘The wastage must be appalling,’ remarked Henry, his eye ever on the political side of things. ‘But after all, they don’t often get a chance to spend £5,000,000 a day in Whitehall.’

  In preparing for the upcoming push, Pip’s route carried him along a sunken road that had been a site of fierce resistance by the Germans. The fallen defenders still lay there. As he walked past the bloated corpses Pip could hear intermittent buzzing noises. He was baffled until he saw flies emerge through their open mouths. ‘A good thing,’ he remarked, ‘that the poor devils are well and truly dead and cannot see themselves.’ When he got to Trônes Wood to assist with tidying up some trenches a literal cloud hung over them. They were unsure of how seriously to take the threat of gas. They were told that the Germans had been releasing phosgene, which apparently had ‘a sweetish, somewhat repellent smell’. The air inside the wood made their eyes run. The site was so overrun with mangled foliage and tree stumps that moving about made wearing a gas mask impossible on account of restrictions to vision and movement. ‘One did not lightly put on one’s gas mask, or give the order that others should do so.’ Every time though that Pip passed a dressing station and saw gagging, blue men he was reminded of what would happen if his judgement failed.

  By 12 September all the battalions had been issued with bombs, sandbags, rockets, flares, wire cutters and just about every other bit of battlefield paraphernalia that the army could muster. As the day crept ever closer they all visited Carnoy in turn to put their personal belongings in storage. The commander of the Guards called a conference for his brigadiers and senior officers to explain the plans for the advance.

  Born in 1893 Oliver Lyttelton was the son of famed cricketer Alfred and the nephew of Edward, headmaster of Eton throughout his time there. Another of Samuel Lubbock’s boys, he was bright; ‘too clever and too old [for] many average Eton boys’. Raymond Asquith once said of him that his chief defect was ‘telling rather long and moderately good stories and laughing hysterically long before he [came] to the point’.

  Like Lyttelton men before him, Oliver left Eton and went up to Trinity College, Cambridge. At the outbreak of war he was originally commissioned into the Bedfordshire Regiment where he patrolled the seafront at Dovercourt looking for spies. Along with two Eton friends, including ‘Bobbety’ Cranbourne, Oliver lasted a month before they all requested a transfer. A period of panic followed until Lord Salisbury, Bobbety’s father, raised hell and they were moved to the Grenadier Guards in time for Christmas. Oliver went to France at the beginning of 1915 and eventually became the adjutant of the 3rd Battalion, which was now preparing for a leading role in Rawlinson’s last-ditch Somme effort before winter kicked in.

  There were four lines detailed on the day’s objectives. For the Guards the first, the Green, was 1,000 yards past Ginchy and would require them to swing their line around so that they were facing properly east instead of north-east. Then in stages they would be attempting to advance on towards Brown, Blue and finally the Red line running between Morval and Les Boeufs.

  Oliver Lyttelton was to go over first with his battalion and capture the green line. ‘Our furthest objectives,’ he wryly remarked, ‘as marked on our operational maps, were distant, and we cynically supposed that few of us would be alive to reach them.’ He had been out reconnoitring the assault trenches from which they were to advance. Zero hour would come at dawn on 15 September.

  On 13 September the Guards were still trying to improve their positions but attempts were ‘hurriedly and inadequately organised’ and ended in failure. Of one company of Irish Guards that went out only thirty returned. Elsewhere Harold MacMillan’s battalion attempted to drive the Germans out of orchards to the north of Ginchy, but were forced to concede defeat and just start digging in where they were at the cost of another hundred men.

  Whilst one OE was waiting to go into the lines he woke up one morning to see all about them vast looking shapes covered in tarpaulins. The men were completely baffled. It was not until some days later that they learned these were the first tanks, ‘mysterious vehicles’, Pip Blacker called them. There was a buzz of excitement surrounding them and what they might do.

  The day before the big advance was relatively serene. Harold MacMillan was still in the lines, waiting to be relieved whilst the Germans shelled his battalion heavily. One sergeant was mortally wounded, another buried alive and dug out by his colleagues. In the evening the assaulting troops arrived and Harold returned to Ginchy to receive rations and rum. It was a bitterly cold night and all of the men had left their greatcoats in Carnoy. Pip Blacker was stumbling about Bernafray Wood with a platoon of men, ‘tidying up’ a trench overnight ready for use the next day. Henry Dundas was to miss the show. Ill with a crippling stomach complaint for the two weeks or so leading up to 15 September, he arrived back a fraction too late to take part and found himself kept back from rushing up to join the others. He was going to have to sit and wait. Evelyn Fryer was also one of a number of his battalion kept back. He sat dejectedly at Carnoy listening to rumours of disaster and grew progressively more miserable as the day went on.

  The eve of the assault, 14 September, had been a clear but windy day and Oliver Lyttelton had sat and scrawled what he thought might be his last letter to his mother. At about 11 p.m. the 3rd Grenadiers moved off towards their assembly trenches, up a gentle slope where darkness concealed all of the shell holes bleeding into one another. Tensions ran high. The men, weighed down by equipment, were silent. ‘There was a sensation that this slowness was prolonging our last night on earth,’ Oliver recalled, ‘drawing out our last living hours.’

  The battalion took up position and proceeded to dig in a little more for safety but there were not enough front-line trenches to accommodate them all. All fires and lights were to be kept down, anything that might betray their position. As dawn approached they were directed by tape and posts laid out by the Royal Engineers. The line they were to attack was a cramped semi-circle. If the units on each side of Oliver’s
battalion failed, then their flanks would be left wide open to machine-gun fire from another dreaded German strongpoint known as the Quadrilateral; or from trenches on the opposite side. At 4 a.m. Oliver and his men were given sandwiches and rum. Some of them tried to sleep. There was little chatter.

  Meanwhile the tanks had begun to move up to their jumping-off points and their distant rumbling could be heard by the Grenadiers as they waited for daylight. Three of these new monsters were to advance with the Guards, beginning on their left and crossing over them as they moved on. At 5 a.m. they were seen moving slowly forward on the left flank but apparently aroused no suspicion and did not attract any German fire. In the bitter cold Oliver blew on his fingernails and downed some more rum. Throughout the night the artillery boomed steadily on in readiness for the attack, but the noise was nothing compared to what happened as daylight approached.

  At 6 a.m. the heavy guns started, firing forty shells apiece in quick succession. Twenty minutes later it had just begun to get light. Pip was finishing his work in Bernafray Wood when ‘the air went taut in a tidal wave of sound’. The noise pressed down on his eardrums and made him feel dizzy. His senses cut out, it felt as if all five of them had been pushed down into a lower plane of consciousness. ‘Standing like mutes’ they attempted to use some sort of sign language to communicate and waved their arms about in gestures to make themselves understood.

  As the wall of the creeping barrage came down, three Coldstream Guards battalions went over in tandem. This was the first time they had attacked together in their history. Oliver Lyttelton watched in the emerging light as they poured over the top. Men sprawled on to the floor instantly. Then it was his turn. The high-pitched scream of a whistle galvanised him into action and with the rest of his battalion Oliver leapt forward. As he and the Grenadiers went over they hunched forward ‘like men walking into a strong wind’ braving the gust of bullets. As soon as they emerged over the parapet they were met with the rattle of machine guns. Standing less than a yard away from Oliver the commanding officer took a shot to the thigh and buckled. In front of them the Germans had largely survived the artillery barrage. They lurked in shell holes and now they levelled their rifles at the advancing British troops and began to fire. ‘With a hoarse blood cry’ which stayed with Oliver for years afterwards the Grenadiers rushed forwards and began attacking with their bayonets. They were fierce, unstoppable, like animals. They staggered on as the German fire intensified against them.

  Meanwhile, to the north, Harold MacMillan couldn’t explain it but he was certain that he was not going to die that day. He had faced the German guns before and the same couldn’t be said of some of his fellow subalterns. He recalled one occasion when a young officer found him just before they went over the top. ‘[He] cried a little – we were only boys and he behaved very bravely … he knew he’d be killed and he was.’ Harold and his men were supposed to move off behind the joint Coldstream rush. The Coldstream were to take the Green line, shifting the direction of the attack, and Harold and his men were then to sit in it until the Irish Guards in turn passed through them to seize the next objective. Whilst in place, they were to form a defensive flank to hold the line if the attack started to disintegrate.

  In Bernafray Wood, Pip Blacker had literally no idea what was occurring on the battlefield. ‘Conflicting rumours percolated’ via wounded men who staggered away from it. Daylight had fully come on when he was given a job to do. Pip and his men were ordered to follow the advance, across the pitted, churned route, and somehow mark out a track of sorts through the battlefield for horse-drawn traffic to get to the new front line. Where this track would go, and when it was ready to come into use was all down to Pip. It was not a happy task, for they would be standing fully in the open; target practice for the German gunners as the battle raged on.

  The nature of the attack and attempting to shift the direction of their advance as they went forward was causing bewilderment amongst the Guards battalions. On the left of Oliver Lyttelton, one of the Coldstream battalions fell under the British creeping barrage. In the confusion they became lost in the smoke and began swerving north instead of north-east as planned, causing a big swing to the left in the line. The other two Coldstream battalions followed and the whole attack began to veer off track. Oliver Lyttelton’s Grenadiers followed in turn and a gap opened just north of the road running from Ginchy to Les Boeufs. With the heavy machine-gun fire scattering the Guardsmen it grew even more chaotic and the units became hopelessly jumbled. Rather than proper platoons there were now smaller groups fighting their way frantically forward and paying little attention to the wider situation.

  The most problematic area was a sunken road full of Guards to the north of Ginchy, which accounted for swathes of various Coldstream officers and men. They threatened to fold until John Campbell, the OE commanding the 2nd Battalion, rallied his troops with his hunting horn. It seemed ludicrous to those around him, but he had taken it into battle with the aim of using it for just this purpose in the confusion of the fight. He and his combined force swept forward over the open ground towards the imaginary Green Line and were in position by 7.15 a.m. – albeit too far north along it because of the skewed advance. They had strayed into the area belonging to a division that included Foss Prior and the 8th Rifle Brigade towards Delville Wood.

  To the left of the Guards, Foss had returned to the front having finished recuperating from his Hooge wound with lots of time spent at Eton. His battalion was preparing to attack to the east of Delville Wood and with Arthur Sheepshanks he had been out reconnoitring the terrain ready for the attack. They were to advance up a gentle slope and take a line titled ‘Switch Trench’ at the top of a low rise. Foss had taken one of the battalion’s leading companies out over the parapet and charged towards the German lines. Advancing up the hill towards Switch Trench at the head of the battalion the German artillery resistance became heavier and heavier. Jumping into the trench they found that it was still stuffed with Germans. They seized it at bayonet point and moved on. Unfortunately some of the Germans who had surrendered suddenly began attacking Foss’ men from behind. Sandwiched in between enemy troops the 7th Rifle Brigade arrived and messy hand-to-hand fighting soon ensued as they tried to even up the score. By 10.30 a.m. the battalion’s commanding officer had been wounded by shrapnel and Sheep took over command of the 8th Rifle Brigade. They had reached and taken their first objective but it was costly. Inside Switch Trench, Sheep could only count five fellow officers, a medical officer and about 150 men.

  Swept away in the moment, along with the Grenadiers beside him, Oliver Lyttelton was ‘fighting mad’. He and his men rushed the summit at the top of the slope they had targeted and paused to take a breath whilst they rounded up prisoners. Looking about, Oliver could see that all of the battalions had become frightfully mixed up. He had some Grenadiers, some Coldstream and some Irish Guardsmen. He could see no other officer so he rounded up about a hundred men close to him and put himself in charge. He organised his ramshackle group. ‘Get this parapet straight,’ he ordered, ‘and dig like hell.’ While they were attempting to mop up a powerful enfilading fire was turned on them from the direction of the Quadrilateral, and although they now had some cover two or three of his men quickly became casualties.

  At this moment, a German doctor emerged from a nearby dugout, escorted by some of Oliver’s men and ‘blinking in the sunlight’. Oliver grabbed his opportunity to find out more about their position. ‘Do you speak English … where is that fire coming from?’ The man pointed to the Red Cross on his arm. ‘I am a non-combatant and I do not know.’ Oliver pulled out his revolver and absurdly threatened to shoot him. At this the doctor promptly burst out laughing. ‘I am quite sure you will do nothing of the kind.’ Oliver couldn’t help smiling at his own silly threat. ‘Get out of here,’ he said and watched as the German scrambled up the back of the trench. ‘I kicked him not very hard in the behind to restore my self respect.’ The doctor merely grinned as he made off. Ol
iver later learned that he had spent the rest of the day down in the valley under the same heavy fire as Pip Blacker, tending to the wounded with nothing but the stash of field dressings that he had on him. ‘A brave man.’

  Harold MacMillan by now had gone over the top too. After the first half an hour they had got through the worst of the fierce German artillery barrage. Harold himself had been slightly wounded in the knee but refused point blank to turn back, waiting till there was a halt and then binding it up himself. They halted for a second time at about 8.20 a.m. and found that they were being held up by Germans in a 500-yard stretch of uncleared trench, which they attempted to bomb and rush.

  Communications were dire and having despatched pigeons backwards and forwards the fact that the attack in this area managed to retain any kind of clarity was down to an officer named ‘Crawley’ De Crespigny. Insisting on going about in his forage cap and not a helmet he was to follow Harold MacMillan’s battalion, but having found no sign of them he decided that they had already moved on to the next objective and decided to carry out his original orders. He therefore proceeded to the Green Line.