I waited for a moment or two to recover a more usual frame of mind. Then I walked back to my men. I told them the way was blocked and said they had better be careful at places where the trench was blown ‘in case’ such spots were covered by machine-guns or snipers. I said I was going to try the left flank.
A few yards to the left I found another destroyed patch of trench. Heeding my own advice this time I picked up an abandoned rifle and crawling on my belly raised the butt slowly and cautiously till I thought it might show. At once a burst of machine-gun fire knocked it out of my grasp as if it had been struck by a sledge hammer.
I went back to my men. This time I would wait till dark before further experiments.
After a while I relieved the sentry. I told two to keep by the gun ready to fire, and the other two to start digging the trench deeper, throwing the earth so as to seal off the ends of the trench to give us some defence from enfilade fire as well as the existing protection from front and rear.
Before long Gunner Sears called out that they had reached soft mud. He took my place whilst I had a look. As I watched I could see water welling up from below; it was obvious that we could dig no deeper. I felt unable to think, at the end of my resources.
It seemed important to keep the men occupied, so for that reason more than for any other I told Sears and his mate to hollow out two upright shallow depressions in the front wall of the trench so that they could just recline in them, and if possible sleep in them as they stood. Taking over the sentry job I told them to make the depressions as strong and firm as patting with entrenching tools allowed.
23
THE remains of the camp gave very good cover for any sniper who wanted to approach our line. As I was not a soldier it did not occur to me that the same might be true in the opposite direction. Had I been a soldier I might have wanted to go in the opposite direction, but as I was only a public school boy dressed up as a soldier, complete with decoration, I had not the necessary resources. I felt, secretly, that my morale was bad.
Nowadays I would not make such a simple diagnosis, but as it was I was impelled to prove my courage—the lack of it being, as I thought, my main defect. This erroneous idea was, and still is, generally held. Cromwell knew there was something wrong with his armies. He was opposed by a great man, Prince Rupert, who had courage and a high morale, but temperamentally was an amateur and could not see his problem in any terms other than those of the amateur outlook. Cromwell, who might appear to be even more of an amateur, was temperamentally a professional; his approach to his material, the ‘decayed tapsters and serving men’, was characteristically professional. He saw that, coming into a situation which he, like Rupert, had inherited, something had to be done to remedy the past and forestall the future. Rupert had a cause, the Royalist cause: Cromwell had a religion and a God. The god of the Royalist cause was a poor specimen of human being who, despite all his attempts and those of his later followers at sanctification, could only reform, too late, radically poor material which in fact remained the poor stuff it was. That was a bad start for Rupert’s foundations. Patriotism, Edith Cavell discovered much later, was not enough. On this foundation Rupert failed to erect the necessary structure for an army at war.
Cromwell, a farmer, had learned in his contact with the real forces of nature that there is no substitute for discipline. He applied this discovery to what was, superficially, an entirely new situation. It was therefore second nature in him to realize that his soldiers, if they were to be soldiers, must have discipline as well as a cause. His God had to have qualities superior to those of a fallible and frail human being. With ‘cause’ and its attendant structure of discipline Cromwell had an immeasurably superior foundation on which to build. His cavalry improved: Rupert’s did not. Both men had the same disadvantage, namely, coming into the story too late. The minimum conditions necessary for the work to be done cannot be improvised for they require generation of time for maturation. The seeds must be there but also the soil, the nation which allows them to germinate.
When I entered actively for the first time into the nation’s affairs it was as a recruit destined as a matter of course to become an officer; I did not qualify for a vote in a general election till the fighting was over. Now, at Messines, I was re-entering a war which from my viewpoint had fundamentally altered. I could not say why I felt this; still less could I formulate the change of which I had become certain after Cambrai.
When I peered cautiously at the huts in front of me I was still untrained—not a professional, but certainly not an amateur. I was no longer obsessed with ambition to be brave; that I knew was beyond me, but I did not want to be disgraced. There was usually no danger of disgrace because there was nothing disgraceful to do—you cannot run away in company or, at least, it is relatively difficult. As a section commander I was to learn of problems associated with loneliness and isolation. As I peered into no-man’s land I was to experience one of them almost at once,
A sheet of corrugated iron slithered from a roof and crashed to the ground. I was watching that spot at the time so I knew what caused the grinding metallic sound that preluded the crash. Then the silence which was absolute flowed back and enveloped first the camp and then our party in a hideous fear. I watched. I waited for the grenade thrower. Nothing. At last, to break this evil spell, I looked at my watch. It was twelve minutes past ten. I returned to stare at the camp. The sun was shining, the sky blue. The Lewis gun, flanked by the two intense gunners, glistened like a small sinister idol, the centre of a strange religion. There was no sound. I kept my gaze on the huts for any sign of movement.
At last, feeling it must by now be past noon, I looked at my watch again. It was not quite a quarter past ten. I looked at my watch incredulously; the second hand was moving and the sun confirmed the hour. Again I felt fear. Could I possibly last till evening? In desperation I stopped thinking about the past or future; I began taking compass bearings on every object within my limited view. To my relief my fear began to ebb away. It was an experience familiar to me in my childhood nightmares but not in waking life. It was to be repeated over and over again in this new horrid shape throughout the war till at last it began to lose its horror by force of repetition.
We took it in turns to do the simple jobs I had laid down. These changes afforded us all relief until I judged it had become dark enough for me to start my tour to the left flank.
Some dim recollection that troops always ‘stood to arms’ at dawn and again at dusk made me tell the men to ‘stand to’ regardless of the fact that they had done nothing but stand to arms all day. Experienced troops would know that no one would be likely to be prowling about a ruined camp at ten in the morning; an experienced officer would not have started to tour his section of trench at dusk. I was not experienced, not trained, not disciplined. Therefore—I set out. Having passed, on my belly, the part of ruined trench where I knew I would come under bursts of fire from the machine-gun I began my walk along the intact though ragged trench. As I did so I heard the moan of approaching shells. It was the start of the evening ‘strafe’. I did not know this; to me it was all hell let loose. The entire trench system began to break loose and start skywards in great and little clods of earth. I was sure in my ignorance that the enemy had started a night attack—and in my ignorance I was quite correct.
Feeling I could hardly be in greater danger outside the trench than in it I walked, stumbled and ran along the top. So long as I remained alive and unwounded it was faster than trying to scramble along the trench and to some extent I could keep a direction. I fell down, threw myself down and was blown down every few yards, but eventually I was hailed by a voice from the trench. I stood on the top and shouted my inquiries, thus displaying my coolness under fire—I hoped. One of the men pulled me in; I may even have had enough sense to hope that someone would.
The crew had made themselves relatively comfortable and were encouraged by the presence of an infantry officer. I went into the dug-out where there were three o
fficers. Ordinarily they would have been in candle-light but as the candles were extinguished at once by concussion from the shell-bursts they were relying on a torch, the battery of which must have been exhausted.
I was excited and under the impression that I was engaged in repelling an enemy attack, whereas they were under the impression that they were undergoing a sordid ritual—so-and-so wounded, so-and-so killed; ‘shuffle the cards old man, and pass the whisky’. 1 cannot believe my intervention and the subsequent conversation meant much more than a shrug of the shoulders and the assumption that I was a ‘case’.
I ventured that our gunners did not seem to be answering the enemy barrage. A sardonic face turned an angry look on me.
“What makes you think we have any gunners? We’ve had no artillery support, no air cover since we came.”
Apparently he saw ‘the ribbon’. Anyhow his look softened and he began to smoulder rather than to flame.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Three weeks”, he replied. I knew they were a West Riding regiment because I overheard one of my men ask one of theirs as we passed in a communication trench when we moved in, “Who are you chum?”
“West Ridings—who are you?”
“The fucking Tanks—walking.”
I excused myself as I had to get to our left flank. I probably made some remark intended to convey good will or a desire to help. If so I cannot imagine what impression other than one of stark idiocy it created on them.
24
I STARTED off in the trench till I was out of sight of my gun crew and then continued as before. It might be daft to expose myself like that but at least I had some idea where I was going. It might be daft to leave the shelter of the dug-out. But how, in war, does one decide what is daft? The answer is that one does not, if one can help it, decide these things in war. They are decided in peace, formulated in training manuals, enforced by orders. Such is the perversity of the human animal that these prudent dispositions intended to protect against irresponsibility and uniformed improvisation are then erected into rigid barriers as a defence against thought.
Thus, after Cambrai when Quainton and others of us who began to have doubt about our wisdom in taking up arms came to the point of decision, we fell back on inertia because we had decided to fight supposedly when in a godly, righteous and sober frame of mind. The solitary exception to this convention was a scruffy, red-faced, unshaven scoundrel who, being asked by our then apoplectic colonel—appropriately named Bulk—what had caused him to enlist, swivelled his blood-shot eye on the display of patriotic ribbon before him and said, “Booze”. When we learn, like the child walking, to act automatically without expenditure of thought we also learn how to avoid pain by economizing thought.
Again a shout; I jumped into the trench where Hauser and his crew were. Hauser said he had been to see the left flank gun under Sergeant O’Toole and found them in good form. Then there wasn’t much point in going on to them? He agreed. He also agreed that the enemy was going to attack.
The barrage increased in intensity, but as we had no Very lights there was no way in which we could see if his infantry had left their trenches. Then to our right I thought I saw figures. I drew my Colt and began to drop ammunition into the chamber. It gave me relief to be doing something. I heard through the din the chattering tinny fire of Lewis guns and hoped that they were ours. There was a Vickers firing about twenty yards to our right.
“Must be one of the battalion guns.”
“I didn’t see any when I came.”
“I should have thought you would hardly be able to see anything at all. It’s not a German gun anyhow”, said Hauser.
As I was loading my revolver I felt it was the end, the last straw. I decided if the enemy came to grips I would empty my revolver into any German I could and then surrender ‘hande hoch’. It did not occur to me that the Germans would not be idle while I was firing or that I would still be in a dangerous place liable to be killed at any time after surrender. I felt it would all be over.
I finished loading carefully and methodically. Hauser told me, a long time after, how funny my stolid method seemed and how immensely reassuring. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the attack to our right peter out—or so I thought. In fact I could not possibly have distinguished; I must have realized this for Hauser told me I had warned our gunners to expect enemy in front and also coming along our trench from the right.
The rest of that night was made up of fitful gunfire, shells blowing in our trench, machine-guns—but apparently no response from us. The dispiriting effect was profound and only became clear when we could compare our lot with something better.
We were in that position for three weeks. I have no clear memory of this period except one day when the monotony of helplessness was broken by a display in strength by the Royal Flying Corps. Suddenly a formation of bombers and fighters appeared above our lines and swept the skies clear of enemy planes. The demonstration lasted for half an hour. For us who had seen no British planes for three weeks it was a revelation of power almost unbelievable in its majesty. Though the enemy dribbled back in his ones and twos after our planes had left we never again quite lost the sense of pride and assurance.
A similar sense of mastery was communicated by the French just before our relief. One day we were told that from nightfall we should be supported by the French artillery who were relieving ours. Our gunners were firing with worn barrels—when indeed they were able to fire at all. The result was premature bursts so that instead of shelling the enemy we had the mortification of being peppered by shell-bursts from our own guns at the back of our necks. There was a celebrated story of a warrant officer who had fallen in his men under a flag of truce, marched the small party back to the supporting gunners of the 7th Division and offered to surrender to them. The 7th Division were proud men and did not like this bitter comment on their worn guns, honourably worn; our times did not lend themselves to such humours. We did not pretend to relish the advent of French gunners who we assumed would be even worse than our own.
The night proved restless. The French, said to be the famous Nancy Division, the 11th, the Corps de Fer, had moved in to support behind our right. The enemy, presumably having wind of the relief, were unusually active. The French responded, not with a few Very lights, but with a pyrotechnic display of rockets, ‘flaming onions’—so named after their appearance in the night sky—star shells, and a peculiar noise which first resembled a beating of many biscuit tins and then became the characteristic bark of what was then the most famous artillery gun in the world, the French 75. Instead of passively enduring what we could not cure we found a screen of fire put down between us and the enemy positions.
Starved of hope as we were we could hardly bear the relief which these friendly and efficient gunners gave us that night; since the previous evening we had had to withstand six attacks on our position. I will not say we had beaten them off. We had countered them; we had fired on them. Why they had persisted and why finally they had stopped I do not know. Perhaps their nightmares were worse because hope was mixed in with them, while ours were untroubled by anything so unnerving. That night was like a refreshing rain.
The terrible disasters which have befallen the French, starting with the mutinies of 1917, have laid many brave men of a brave nation open to the imputation of degeneracy. But April and August that year gave me a short, profound insight into the French fighting man which threw a glaring and unwelcome light on the frivolity that marked some of our attitudes.
When the French infantry relieved us they were complimentary about our efforts; they were astonished at our extended line and the insignificant numbers with which we had held it. They were gay; they seemed in no way anxious to disguise their arrival from the enemy. When they were alarmed they advertised it by the truly beautiful firework display. When the enemy put down their barrage there was nothing half-hearted about the answering 75’s. And as one of our men, hardly able to credit his eyes, r
eported, “Sir! They’re all standing on the top of the trench peeing into it before they get in!” I looked back and sure enough that was exactly what they seemed to be doing.
A couple of hours later we were in billets, two or three farm buildings in good repair. Hot water, shaves, more or less clean clothes, conspired to give an evening meal of bully beef stew a sense of luxury. Cook, Carter, Hauser and I were with fifteen men left out of twenty. Never had we known so few casualties.
An orderly brought in a message. Cook read it and when we had finished our meal, but before we had completely relaxed, he said quietly, “Sorry you chaps. Pack up—back we go. The Boche have broken through. We must man the line—quick—at Chinese Wall, before they get there. Lorries are waiting.”
How cold the night had become, how dark. No brilliant white of our barrage illuminating the distant line—only the sombre spurt and immediately dying glow of bursting enemy shells to show how much closer the line had come.
This time I had four gun teams and a new officer, Osprey, under me. Cook again was in command at Advanced Company HQ with Carter as his second in command—though in theory he was the Reconnaissance Officer and marked to go back to that job if we ever had tanks again. I was to establish my Section HQ somewhere between Company HQ and our gun positions. By the time we reached our position there was not a sign of any disturbance, let alone battle and breakthrough. Thank God! Thank God! Could it be a false alarm? I devoutly hoped so. But it was not; the breakthrough was to our right.
The silence and lack of activity was soon obtrusive as even more unnerving than the chaos of shell-fire we had just been relieved of by the French. I didn’t know what was happening, or what had happened. The war had become a terrifying game of chess in which we had to participate. It was difficult to find an adjustment to the fact that one had become a metaphor with which one was familiar as a debased cliche. We were mere pawns. By God—so we were!
The Long Week-End 1897-1919 Page 23
