1915: The Death of Innocence

by Lyn Macdonald

  The shell fell well in front of the trench, but it was near enough to cause the men to duck involuntarily and let out a collective sigh of relief when the fall-out subsided. It was several minutes before Lieutenant Taylor of the Royal Engineers came staggering down the sap and almost collapsed into Agius’s arms. He was incapable of speech, he was green and gasping, and he was waving a message which he apparently wished Agius to wire to brigade headquarters: ‘Am somewhat gassed,’ it read, ‘but will attempt carry on at time stated if you wish. Wind one mile per hour southerly direction.’ Taylor was quite obviously unfit to ‘carry on’, and in no state even to tell what had happened but it was not hard to guess that the shell had hit the gas cylinders in the trench ahead and already there was a whiff of gas in the air. There was nothing to be done but to call for stretcher-bearers, to rewrite the illegible message adding ‘Lieutenant Taylor incapable of carrying on’ and dispatch it by runner.

  Even before Agius could go forward to find out what precisely had happened another message arrived, scribbled with frantic haste, blurred and spattered with raindrops, but its purport was plain enough. ‘To Captain 3rd London: one battery of cylinders destroyed by bomb 4.35. Several men gassed slightly, one seriously.’ It was signed ‘Figg Acting Sergeant RE’.

  It was the first of Figg’s urgent calls for help, and even before Agius had mustered a party of volunteers to go forward another arrived. The messenger’s eyes were bulging and streaming as he stumbled out of the sap. ‘Must have twenty men at once to cover remaining gas batteries with sandbags. Figg Acting Sergeant RE.’

  Pulling on his gas-mask, Agius went forward to see the situation for himself. It was desperate. The trench was badly knocked about. Despite Figg’s valiant efforts gas was seeping steadily from the damaged cylinders. One after another, as the gas spread, men were collapsing wild eyed, vomiting, gasping for breath, and it was obvious that Sergeant Figg himself was on the point of collapse.

  Agius’s men did their best. It was hard labour working in suffocating gas-helmets to rebuild the broken trench, to tear sandbags from the sides of the sap, to heave them to the forward post, to pile them round the cylinders in a blinding smog of concentrated fumes. Man after man succumbed. The guns were thundering, time was running out, the gas was still escaping from the damaged cylinders. Now it was hanging thick in front of the trenches and drifting lazily northward enveloping more of their own line as it went, drifting everywhere but towards the Germans.

  At zero hour the Gurkhas waiting to go donned gas-helmets and charged through it. It was a bad start.

  Capt. W. G. Bagot-Chester, MC.

  Clouds of gas blew backwards and we had to tuck our helmets which we were wearing all the tighter. I was wearing two helmets one over the other, but in spite of these my throat became very sore. Even before we started one of the gas men in the traverse in which I was standing keeping an eye on my watch became overcome while working his removal sprayer and was lying at my feet groaning horribly. I was counting the seconds and when I gave the signal to cross the parapet I think we were all glad to get out of our trench full of gas. The air in front was thick with gas and smoke from the smoke bombs and we couldn’t see more than a few yards. There was not a shot fired from the Germans and owing to this we were able to slacken our pace to a quick walk and dress our line to a certain extent. The distance to the front German trench was about two hundred yards. For the first eighty yards the air was thick, but as we emerged into view of the Hun they let drive at us. I found my men dropping all round me, and when I reached the German wire I was practically alone and I found myself with one or two others literally running along the outside cage of the German wire searching for a way through.

  The wire was not cut, and there was no way through. In a matter of moments Bagot-Chester felt a sharp blow on his right shoulder and fell to the ground close to the German wire. It would have impaled him had he not been flung backwards by the force of the bullet. He thanked his lucky stars for that and rolled into a shell-hole a yard or so away. It was the smallest of shell-holes, gouged by a ‘pipsqueak’ – too small and too shallow to give much cover. Havildar Budhiman was already there, clutching his wounded arm, and there was just enough room for the two of them lying face to face on their uninjured sides. Raising his head an inch to risk a cautious look across the pock-marked ground Bagot-Chester could see wounded men in every shell-hole, squirming and jumping under a shower of shrapnel and flying bullets. There was a squeal beside him. Budhiman had been hit again. His breathing became laboured, his face turned grey and pallid, he was obviously in pain. Bagot-Chester had morphia in his pocket but the shell-hole was so shallow, the firing was so fierce, the cover was so puny, that he dared not turn to reach it with his left hand, and his right hand beneath his shattered shoulder was useless. There was nothing for it but to lie still, to hope for the best and to wait for the dark.

  They lay there for thirteen hours. By mid-afternoon both men were half unconscious with pain, for Budhiman had been hit again in the legs, and a shell fragment had pierced his captain’s right groin, and by and by two more splinters wounded his left foot and his left leg below the knee. Late in the afternoon to complete their misery the rain came on in torrents and their shell-hole began to fill with water. But at least the discomfort roused them to consciousness and, better still, the firing eased up as the machine-gunners who had been paying them such assiduous attention sought shelter. All that Bagot-Chester could see from his position just below ground level was the rain running from strand to strand on the black wall of barbed wire looming above him and the merest glimpse of a trench behind it. It was not a pleasant sight but, feeling instinctively that his best chance of survival lay in staying conscious, he forced his eyes to stay open and nudged Budhiman from time to time when he showed signs of drifting off.

  It was the longest day of his life.

  Capt. W. G. Bagot-Chester, MC.

  The rain stopped after a time and dusk began to come on, so slowly it seemed to us. Budhiman wanted to be off, but I was not taking any risks. We had lain about all day and it was stupid to spoil our chance by leaving half an hour too early. I suppose it was about eight o’clock when we started. I had lost so much blood I couldn’t get up on my feet, and in trying to do so I was very sick. Fortunately the rain had made the clay soil so slippery that I was able to slide myself along on my back. Every now and then I came up against a dead body in the dark and it was a great effort to me in my weak state to get round them. My progress was very slow. When I got about half-way back to our trenches, I was able to stand on my feet – or rather on one foot and the other heel – but I couldn’t walk more than five yards without collapsing, so really I got on quicker on my back. Finally I struck a muddy wet ditch about fifty yards from our trenches, and thinking to get on quicker along its slippery bottom I crawled into it, but I found it worse, and I was too weak to get out again, so I had to give it up. Fortunately the ditch seemed to be a highway for other wounded and unwounded and presently to my surprise an old Colour-Sergeant of mine in the 2nd Black Watch – Sutherland by name – came crawling along with some of his men. He tried to help me to move along, but I couldn’t do any more so he went on and let them know in our own trenches that I was out. After waiting some time, wet through and almost frozen stiff, Captain Burton, DSO (since killed), came out, bringing four of his men and a stretcher. I was soon in then, and he gave me some whisky. It was about 10.30 p.m. before I got to our first aid dressing station and after fifteen minutes’ rest in our doctor’s dug-out he sent me on to the advanced dressing station which meant being carried on a stretcher down a communication trench about eight hundred yards long, and then on a tramway another mile and a half. I was so tired that I kept falling asleep every time the stretcher stopped in the communication trench.

  But at least he was alive and on his way to safety. So was Havildar Budhiman, but of Bagot-Chester’s hundred and twenty men who had gone into action, eighty-six had been killed, wounded or were missi
ng.*

  The firing tailed off as if the enemy too was exhausted by the gruelling events of the day. The troops were back where they started. Sentries had been posted, the men were dozing as best they could but Agius was still awake, still harassed as he had been all day by urgent requests for information. Apart from the fact that the attack on his immediate front had failed he had very little idea of what had happened in the course of the day. He had half filled his message pad in the course of the last twenty hours and responding to the latest urgent request for information he took the opportunity of trying to find out.

  Situation unchanged. Mist prevents anything from being seen. Night fairly quiet. We dispersed a German party working on their parapet 3.50. Can you tell me how far the right of the Brigade has got on?

  The fact was that it hadn’t got on at all.

  Just a mile or so away on the Loos front beyond the la Bassée Canal, the shelling went on at intervals all night. Behind the enemy line they were rushing up munitions, gathering what reinforcements they could and reorganising their line. After their first spectacular dash the French had been brought to a halt at the foot of the Vimy Ridge. From the German point of view the situation there was still precarious but with the cessation of the attacks at Neuve Chapelle, Bois Grenier, and Hooge, it was becoming clear to the German High Command that the main push was against Loos. Tomorrow the attack would surely be renewed, and tomorrow they would be ready for it. Scarce though their manpower was, twenty-two extra battalions were rushed to the battle area. By morning the second line would be far more strongly held than their front line had been at the outset of the British attack.

  It had been a long day for the gunners, and an exhausting one, but towards evening when Alan Watson’s team no longer had a gun to fire, he unexpectedly had time on his hands, and he used it to scribble in his diary.

  Gnr. J. A. Watson.

  September 25th. A most exciting day. The attack was made with the aid of a very strong kind of gas which killed hundreds of Germans. Our casualties very few. Advanced about three miles. Everybody in great spirits. I will never forget this week, especially today on the gun. We were working all night and started firing at 3 a.m. – wet to the skin. From our gun we fired a hundred and nineteen shells and then the gun burst! Heavens, what an explosion! We were all round the gun and not a soul was touched – a miraculous escape. One piece of steel ploughed through about eighty yards all trees, hit a wall and glanced off and cut down a tree about six or eight inches thick. Another one about the same size (about one and a half hundredweight) hit the wheel of a gun carriage about four yards to my right and smashed it to smithereens. It was dusk when that happened and the flash nearly blinded us. It was a truly marvellous escape. Saw a good few German prisoners, a miserable-looking lot, all sorts and sizes. Would not have missed today for worlds – really great!

  At First Army headquarters in the chateau at Hinges the lights burned late and the orders that went out to the line were clear and straightforward. Tomorrow where the line had not been broken the troops were to break it, where they had succeeded they were to press forward, and tomorrow they were to recapture Hill 70. Now that they had the assistance of two fresh divisions, in the opinion of the Army Commander there was nothing to stop them smashing the Germans’ second line. The assault of 25 September had not been wholly successful but neither had it been entirely unsatisfactory. The official communique had already been wired from St Omer to London and although it was too soon to expect detailed information, exultant headlines had already been set in type and the presses in Fleet Street were rolling. In a very few hours the welcome news of victory at Loos would thud on to a million doormats to rejoice the Home Front at the breakfast table.

  Chapter 35

  Sunday morning dawned bleak, with a grey drizzling mist. The men were cold and wet and hungry, for not one in a hundred quartermasters endeavouring to convey hot food to their men had managed to reach the line, still less discover their battalions. Some soldiers still had the remains of their iron rations – hard biscuits and perhaps a bite of cheese, but most water bottles had long ago been emptied and it was difficult to eat the dry untempting food when mouths and throats were dry and parched with thirst.

  Lying out with his machine-guns to the left of Bois Hugo, Lieutenant Christison of the 6th Camerons was probably the first man to catch a glimpse of the Germans that morning. During the hours of darkness a battalion of the Northamptons had come up on the left of his post but the patrol Christison sent out returned with disquieting news. The Northamptons had moved away. Now the machine-gunners were isolated up the hill, some hundreds of yards ahead of their Battalion and well out in front of the ragged line.

  Lt. A. F. P. Christison, MC.

  We stood-to for a bit but all was quiet, and we brewed up some tea. Suddenly looking to my left I saw a line of Boches running forward and jumping into the trench vacated by the Northamptons. I noticed they were the famous 17th Bavarians. I wished we had some bombers, but all I could do was to pull back one machine-gun and a few men to protect my exposed flank. I felt machine-guns should not be sent out on their own without supporting infantry.

  The infantry who might have supported them was still in confusion and efforts to reorganise them during the night and to push forward the new divisions to stiffen the front had only added to the chaos. After dark, plodding through rain and mist in search of some approximate position in strange country, it was remarkable that

  some Battalions had reached the line at all, for roads and tracks were few and the maps the Army had so optimistically issued were of little use, although they helpfully covered many miles of territory east of Loos to guide the troops on their ‘long walk’ after the fleeing Germans. The immediate front occupied such a small area of the large map that few, if any, landmarks were shown – none of the small tracks, none of the numerous slag-heaps, and only an occasional blob to indicate a wood. Even Hill 70 was only marked by a faint contour line. Faced with the need to appoint a rendezvous ‘off the map’ for its supply and ammunition wagons, and for lack of any other clearly distinguishable spot, most battalions had independently plumped for the farm of le Rutoire. Le Rutoire lay almost directly behind the front at Lone Tree on a narrow road linking the highway from Béthune to Lens and the road from Vermelles to the village of Hulluch, and not far from the ruined cottage where Alex Dunbar’s gun was hidden at the start of the battle. It was a narrow road and in peacetime on a busy day during harvest perhaps five or six farm wagons would lumber along its rutted unmade surface. Now, with fifty, sixty, seventy horse-drawn army limbers trying to make their way to the same spot it was little short of mayhem. The jam stretched back for miles.

  The difficulties were just as bad on the main Béthune to Lens road, the vital highway to the line at Loos. It was still being shelled; its surface was so broken and cratered, so littered with dead and the debris of shattered wagons, so choked with streams of wounded, that it had taken hours of sweat and labour to get even a few guns forward and it was almost impossible to get ammunition through. There would not be nearly enough of either to support the new attack on Hill 70. The bombardment was due to begin at eight o’clock in the morning. An hour later the infantry would go into the attack.

  At First Army Headquarters at Hinges it was difficult to appreciate the shifting circumstances that prevailed at the battle-front, for they were beyond description. It would have required hours of study to analyse and weigh up the dispatches of seven separate divisions, which had themselves been compiled from the reports of twenty-one brigades, summing up the position – so far as they could judge it – of eighty-four confused and disorganised battalions. Only time, patience, and the exercise of considerable leaps of imagination and intuition, might have resulted in an omniscient grasp of how matters stood. On the maps on which staff officers had so scrupulously drawn the advanced line, battalions stood neatly ranged in their supposed positions as lead soldiers might be ranged for a set-piece battle. Naturally, they were awar
e that there had been casualties, and Major General McCracken had made it clear in his report from 15th Divisional Headquarters that his division was in no fit state to renew the assault in the morning, but his objections had been overcome. The 62nd Brigade would be detached from the 21st Division to assist him. The advance must be pressed, and before it could go forward, Hill 70 must be retrieved. With that he had to be satisfied.

  Tower Bridge had caught it badly during the night. Its battered twin towers were hidden in the mist. But loose iron girders creaked and clanked in the morning breeze above the Northumberland Fusiliers shivering in rough and ready trenches in a field not far away. They had been waiting and shivering for two tedious hours before orders reached them not long before the bombardment began at eight o’clock. Colonel Harry Warwick summoned the company officers to the shack that served as Battalion Headquarters. Two battalions, their sister battalion the 13th Northumberland Fusiliers and the 8th East Yorks, were to follow in immediate support of the 45th Brigade of the 15th Division. Their own role was to follow two hundred yards behind, attacking on either side of the track that led to Hill 70 redoubt. No track was marked on their maps, the ground was unfamiliar, and the Colonel could only point out the general direction and wish them luck. David Graham-Pole returned to C Company to pass on the orders and warn his men to stand by. Harry Fellowes was not ready. His Lewis gun which had been loaded on to the transport had not yet reached the line.