John Masefield’s Great War: Collected Works

by Philip Errington

  No attempt was made to storm Fricourt during this first day of the battle. It was thought that the Salient there could be pressed on both sides and so forced to surrender. The capture of Mametz gave us a strong and commanding position on the east flank of the Salient. Its west flank was threatened by a strong attack upon all that side.

  This attack, or rather this series of attacks, which had for its objectives the three, four, or five sets of wired lines in the enemy system above a perfect natural glacis, brought our men across the chalk slope, like a slightly tilted table-top, on the west side of the Salient, into position on the west side of Fricourt Wood. With one division entrenched in Mametz and this second division to the west on the line of the Contalmaison Road, the Fricourt Salient was pinched in securely on both sides before nightfall of the first day. It is said that many of the Fricourt garrison, knowing that they were lost, crept out, or rather were withdrawn, from the Salient as soon as it was dark that night.

  To the west of this Fricourt fighting, our men got up Chapes Spur, following the spring of the great mine there, and shut in the little village of La Boisselle on that side. The attack upon La Boisselle itself did not carry more than a part of the village. This was not the fault of the attackers, but the result of things which will be described later. While La Boisselle held out, no progress could be made up Mash Valley on its western side. To the west of Mash Valley, the fort or stronghold of Ovillers held out, exactly as La Boisselle did, and for the same reasons, though just beyond Ovillers (on the western slope of Ovillers Hill) our men secured enough ground to flank the place on that side. Still further to the west, on the Leipzig, our men stormed the end of the Salient, beat and bombed the enemy out of the quarry there, and contrived to hold it, though they could not capture the Wonder Work beyond.

  To the north of this a very gallant attack was made upon Thiepval. Some of the troops in this attack fought their way up the shallow valley under what was called the Schwaben Redoubt, till they reached a point called the Crucifix, near the enemy’s Second-Line System. This point, however, could not be held, so that the end of the Leipzig Salient was the most northern point permanently secured by the first day’s fighting.

  The evening, like the day, was of a perfect summer beauty, with a slight fine-weather haze. It was good weather for flying, though not perfect for observation. The ground was dry and hard, and the weather promised to be steadily fine. On the whole, the first day of the advance to the south of the Ancre had been very successful. To the south of the Somme, where the ground for many miles together is without those strongly marked tactical features which give good observation and positions easy to defend, the French had made triumphant progress, with little loss, against a surprised and shaken enemy. North of the Somme, we had captured a big bow of land from Montauban Brickworks to Mametz, and another, smaller, but important bow, from Sausage Valley to Fricourt. Fricourt Salient was almost ours; its surrender had been made quite certain by the capture of the flanks of its approaches. La Boisselle and Ovillers were both closely pressed, the Leipzig had been mauled and a part of it taken. Altogether (setting aside the French conquests) we had won some two miles of front for a distance of from half a mile to a mile; that is, we had advanced over about an eighth part of the front attacked. Elsewhere, we had held and shaken the enemy, had captured many prisoners and some guns, and had destroyed many bays of trench and miles of wire.

  During all the day, and through a part of the night, many strange things were done and reported. Many small parties of our men attacking in the dust, darkness, and confusion of the battle, over ground pilled of its landmarks and cut into wandering trenches all alike, all ruined, smashed, and full of dead, had gone on in the tumult, far from any planned objective, till they were lost. Even outside the trenches, it is not easy to find one’s way over that blasted moor of mud, from which all the landmarks have been blown. Inside the trenches it is almost impossible; one sap looks like another, one communication trench is like another, one blown-in dugout, or corpse, is like another, and all saps and trenches zigzag and run out of the straight, so that one cannot tell direction. These men, wandering forward, perhaps chasing enemies, from one unknown alley to another, in excitement and danger, far from any possibility of direction or guidance, lost themselves, sometimes half a mile behind the enemy front line. The history of these lost parties will never be known; but there were many of them, from a company to two or three men strong, and their achievements, if collected, would make good reading. Some were destroyed or captured; others, building themselves barricades in the enemy trench, fought all day long against whatever enemy came against them, and after fighting all day, till darkness, they fought or picked their way home, often bringing prisoners with them. It is certain that some of these lost men working in parties or alone, coming suddenly upon some hidden machine gun and putting it out of action, were vital to parts of our advance. The coming back of these lost men, with their amazing stories, was one of the wonders of the day.

  The night was strange and terrible in other ways. Over all the front of the battle there was a heavy fire from the enemy and a going and coming of men. Captured trenches had to be secured; the new line had to be marked and rounded off, with wire to the front and barricades at the sapheads. The new positions had to be linked up with the old, so that men and stores might be moved to them rapidly. Much of them had to be repaired; parts of them, for one reason or another, were untenable; from other parts, thrusts had to be made, to clear away the enemy. All this adjustment of the line and the settling of what was to be or could be held had to be done and tested under fire and in the half darkness of a summer night by great numbers of men. All over the battlefield there was a restless movement of multitudes, as the battalions and the carriers moved up and down. Prisoners were being searched, examined, and sent back. The dead were being gathered for burial and the wounded were being picked up from the shell-holes and wrecks of trenches where they still lay. Endless work of preparation went on all over the conquered ground; dumps had to be formed and observation posts to be dug; and signallers with many miles of telephone wire had to link up posts, stations, and positions with the various headquarters. Behind our old lines there was a similar uneasy heaving; for the batteries were moving up.

  The night passed in this going and coming of men. A business (as of ants), which seemed confused, yet still had a purpose, covered the field. At the same time the battle raged throughout the sector so hotly that the running fire of flashes never died out of the sky. All over the field the glimmers and bursts of fire lit little places and showed groups of men at work – path-clearers, signallers, carriers – preparing for the morrow. In parts of the field, even at midnight, hand-to-hand fighting went on for trenches and bits of trenches which the fighters could not see. The great owls cruised over the field, crying their cries. Star-shells rose and poised and floated and fell down. The rattle and crash of firing, though muffled in that Silent Land, sometimes rose up to such a pitch that people in Amiens (twenty miles away) got out of bed to listen, and felt their windows trembling like live things to the roll of that great drum.

  At dawn on the second day our troops began to put an end to the enemy salient at Fricourt.

  Fricourt itself, the little village, is built at the end of a tongue or finger of land which has a narrow gully (with the Contalmaison Road in it) on the west, and a narrow valley (with a stagnant brook in it) on the east. The slope of the tongue, which broadens as it rises, is upwards, towards the north, so that in advancing upon it from the south one has to climb. Slightly above the village, to the north and north-east of it, is the irregularly shaped, straight-sided wood of Fricourt, which is 1,000 yards long, narrow near the village, but broader higher up, with an average breadth of a quarter of a mile. This wood was now (July 2) outflanked on the east by our troops in Mametz, but it was still a strong enemy fortress, with secure approaches to the salient and secure lines of retreat to the higher fortified ground behind it, further to the north. Like all
other parts of the salient, the wood was edged and crossed with deep and strong trenches of the usual enemy pattern, difficult to storm at the best of times. On the 2nd of July this system of enemy trenches was blind with jungle, partly abattis heaped by the enemy as obstruction, partly uncleared scrub, and partly treetops cut off by our shellfire. The trenches at the edges of the wood were strongly manned with rifle-men and machine gunners.

  Above the highest, northern part of the wood the ground rises to a high chalk table-land about as big as the wood (1,000 yards long by 4,500 broad) and shaped rather like a boot raised to squash Fricourt flat. On this small boot-shaped plateau were more defences, designed, as a soldier has said, “more as temporary unpleasantnesses than as permanent works.” The boot is strangely isolated by gullies and valleys. At the heel is the deep gully of the Contalmaison Road, at the sole is the valley of Mametz, and at the instep is a deep romantic curving valley, with the abrupt, sharply cut sides so often seen in a chalk country. This last valley, from its depth, steepness, and isolation, was known by our men as Shelter Valley.

  The defences of the boot-shaped table-land were as follows: a line of trench known as Railway Alley, which ran (N.E.) from Fricourt Wood towards the toe; odds and ends of work about (1) a farm, (2) a copse called the Poodles, and (3), a crucifix along the leg of the boot; a strong field fortress in the biggish copse called Shelter Wood, which hangs like a curtain of shrubs and trees on the steep wall of the valley, at the top of the leg; the trenched copses, called Lozenge Wood and the Dingle, on the heel and back.

  Beyond Shelter Valley to the north the ground rises to another hill of about the same height as the boot. Men in important works on this hill could, and did, fire upon our men during all the fighting for the possession of the boot.

  At dawn on the 2nd of July our troops advanced to the storm of Fricourt Wood, the Contalmaison Road, Shelter Wood, and as much of the boot-shaped plateau as they could take. As they advanced, the massed machine guns in all the trenches and strongholds opened upon them. They got across the field of this fire into Fricourt Wood to an indescribable day which will never be known about nor imagined. They climbed over fallen trees and were caught in branches, and were shot when caught. It took them all day to clear that jungle; but they did clear it, and by dark they were almost out at the northern end, where Railway Alley lay in front of them on the roll of the hill. Further to the north, on the top of the leg of the boot, our men stormed the Shelter Wood and fought in that 200 yards of copse for four bloody and awful hours, with bomb and bayonet, body to body, till the wood was heaped with corpses, but in our hands.

  Long before our men had secured the two woods the Fricourt Salient was wholly ours. The village was shut off from succour and escape by our capture of the end of the wood at about ten o’clock that morning. By noon all the dugouts in Fricourt had been cleared of the enemy, and by tea-time they had become posts and quarters for our own men. They were the first first-rate enemy dugouts captured by us in good condition. They were deep, well-made underground dwellings, electrically lit, with walls panelled with wood and covered with cretonne. They were well-furnished with luxuries, equipment, and supplies. The dugouts, which had once been the headquarters of the hidden battery in the gully, were taken over as dressing-stations. In one dugout there were signs that a lady had been a visitor. In another there was a downward-drooping bulge in the ceiling, where a big English shell had almost come through on some wet day when the ground was soft. The shell had not burst, but no doubt it had “lowered the moral tone some” in those who were sitting in the room at the time.

  During the 3rd of July our men stormed Railway Alley and secured the whole of the boot-shaped hill by capturing the other fortresses of the Poodles and the Crucifix.

  This Fricourt fighting increased our gains in the centre of our advance. On the right, our men on the top of the ridge of Montauban, though often sharply attacked, and always heavily shelled, were preparing to go down the hill to the attack of the enemy in the valley beneath them.

  This valley is a long, narrow valley between big chalk bluffs. The eastern end of it runs into the valley which parts Mametz from Fricourt. Near this eastern end of it, mainly on the steep slopes of the hill, is a long, bent, narrow ribbon of woodland, so planted that each end commands one end of the valley. This strip of woodland is not remarkable in any way. It is a copse hanging on a steep chalk bank, such as one may see in any chalk country. The enemy had made it a strong redoubt to defend the flanks of the valley, and men advancing northward from Montauban had to take it before they could reach the valley and proceed against the hill beyond. From its appearance on the map, which recalls (to the lively fancy) a looping caterpillar, this wood was called Caterpillar Wood, though it is quite as like a boomerang or a sickle. Just to the north of it is a little fortified copsed dingle known as Marlborough Wood. Preparation for the capture of these two strongholds occupied the right of our advance while Fricourt was being taken by our centre.

  Meanwhile, on the left of our advance, to the west of Fricourt, our attack had straightened and cleared the line as far as La Boisselle. At this village and at Ovillers, further to the west, our progress was slow and costly.

  At both places there was almost no visible enemy work. What trenches remained our men could carry or blow out of trace, but the main strongholds in both villages were not in trenches, but under the wreck of the houses.

  It so happened that the lie of the ground made it very difficult for our men to see what was left of either village. Both places lay on the sides of hills in such a way that our best views of them were from distances. Ovillers village lay along a road at right angles with our front line. Rising ground and big enemy parapets hid it from our front line. Ovillers Hill hedged it in on the west side and Ovillers Wood on the north; on the east there was Mash Valley, which still belonged to the enemy. We could see Ovillers from the Usna Hill behind our front line, but all that we could see were a few skeleton sheds of plasterless woodwork still supporting a few tiles, and a number of heaps of broken brick, among which were heaps of earth and the stumps of trees. There was nothing like order or arrangement in the village. The place looked like a deserted brickfield, made blind by the growth of brambles and weeds. There was nothing in the place that looked like a fort or seemed to hold an enemy.

  La Boisselle was on a gentle slope above our front line and shut from it by heaps of chalk. It, too, could be seen from the Usna-Tara Hill. It, too, had a few skeleton sheds at that time, and a great many tree stumps, for, though it may seem strange to those who see the place today, when the tree stumps are gone, the village stood in a clump of trees, like so many other Picardy villages.

  Those who looked at it through glasses from the Usna-Tara Hill could see little in it that seemed defensible but a collection of mounds of chalk, rubble, and broken brick. Further up the hill on which it stood were enemy lines, with secure communication along the spur from Pozières. The village itself seemed uninhabitable.

  It may be that in the archives of the armies engaged there are plans of the enemy defences in both places, as they were before they were attacked and counter-attacked. Both places were as strong as cunning could make them. Underneath both, linking cellar to cellar, and foundation to foundation, were deep, strongly panelled passages, in which, at intervals, were posts for machine guns, so arranged that the muzzle of the gun in its embrasure was only a few inches above the level of the ground outside. From without, one saw nothing, even close at hand, but heaps of rubble and chalk. Within, were these neat narrow galleries, with living rooms beneath them, and secure underground bolt holes to positions in the rear in case of need. They were large scale examples of the Mouquet Farm type of fortress. They were important points; for if they fell they opened the way to the plateau and the whole position south of the Ancre. Orders had been given to the garrisons that they were to hold the places to the death . . . Both places were well-supplied with munitions and food. For water they had underground access to the we
lls of the villages. For men, they had underground approaches quite unknown to us. They were, in every way, well-prepared, either for siege or assault.

  It is impossible to take fortresses of this kind swiftly. Even if they are surrounded, as at Mouquet Farm later in the battle, they may still hold out and interrupt an advance. If they are shelled, they are under the ground, unseen and unknown; the shells can only reach them by chance; no man can say that the artillery has destroyed them, even after days of shelling. The area, perhaps a quarter of a mile square, may be whelmed with gas for a week. The defenders have their gas masks and oxygen cylinders. The place may be stormed and covered with troops, who may yet see no enemy, for there is no enemy to be seen, except little spurts of fire from holes a few inches long in the heaps of rubble on the ground. Then if desperate, brave souls among the attackers break into those heaps of rubble with pick and shovel and get down into the galleries and fight there, bombing their way through one black channel to another, till the place is, as they think, clear, there may still come a rush of reinforcements along the tunnels of escape and the conquerors may be driven out.

  The attacks upon La Boisselle and Ovillers went on throughout the second day of fighting. The progress made was slight, though many who watched it have said that the fighting round those two points, in these early days of the battle, was some of the hardest, bravest, and bloodiest of the whole war. The enemy knew that we should attack them and how we should have to attack; the ranges were known to an inch, and field batteries were concentrated upon them. Our men had to creep up a glacis, through a barrage, to storm a fort which no man could see. Often, in that groping in the chalk heaps for some sign of the stronghold, the sudden falling of a platoon was the first sign that the objective was reached. Let the reader imagine any quarter mile of hillside known to him, and think to himself that hidden in every ten yards of that space is an infernal machine which will kill him if he touches it or comes near it, but that he has to run to that space, none the less, and destroy every infernal machine, while fire and flying iron rain down upon him out of the air. That was the task at Ovillers and at La Boisselle. The men who went against those two places did not “dodge death,” as the phrase goes, they walked and stumbled across a dark lane which was death. There was a sort of belt of darkness, or cloud, in front of those two ruins, and in that cloud death crashed and whirred and glittered and was devilish. Those who stumbled across it unhit had to creep from pit to pit and from ruin to ruin, looking for the holes in the ground through which the enemy was firing. One man, finding an embrasure through which a machine gun was firing, crept to a cover and fired at the embrasure with his rifle, while his mate, with a pick-axe, picked a hole in the rubble above it big enough for them to fling their bombs down. One evil point of both positions was that they stood on spurs of hill which were roughly parallel with each other, and not more than 600 yards apart. Men on the flank of one spur could sit in cover in almost perfect safety, watching our men attacking the other spur on the opposite side of the valley. It was therefore possible for the enemy to put a cross-fire with machine guns upon either attack. Neither attack progressed far during this hot summer Sunday of July 2.