Delville Wood
Page 22
By then A Coy had been reduced to 17 men.
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At 1 am the British heavy artillery opened fire on the German strong point and trenches, only 40 yards distant from Lieut English. He had no warning of the bombardment, however removed his men without incurring casualties. At noon Lieut English and his men were withdrawn to a trench previously occupied by D Coy. The King’s Own Scottish Borderers then took over the infamous trench D.
Eric Griffiths was with the signallers and when they were annihilated he joined his brother, Sgt Stan Griffiths, as a Lewis gunner. He was wounded, so Stan carried him through the shell fire to the battalion aid post, then returned to the wood.
On his return Stan Griffiths was surprised to find a bitch with its puppies cowering under a fallen tree. In the midst of the battle he found the compassion to comfort the quivering dog.
B Coy had dwindled to 46 men.
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Corporal Doitsh found himself the target of a German sniper.
“In the daylight a sniper had been trying to hit me, and I had had to keep a keen lookout. I wish I could have located him, as I had with me a young traveller who was not known to miss a flying springbok at 800 yards, and Fritz could not have been half that distance away.
“The nearest he got to me was to put a bullet in my emergency ration bag, immediately behind my head, at the back of the trench. I opened it, and found the bullet had gone into the tin of bully beef, which I afterwards ate, but could not find the bullet, so perchance I may have eaten that as well. But better this than having it through my head.
“The Bosch trenches faced us at this point, about 300 yards away. Everything seemed as silent as the grave over there, but to show one’s head above the three feet of trench meant death, as the enemy lurked in every conceivable spot in the grass in front of their trenches.
“At intervals we could discern them endeavouring to dart to another part of the position over the open country, and this afforded great sport, as there was a definite object to aim at. They showed wonderful courage in this adventure, which required nerves of iron.
“We could fathom their scheme, which was to strengthen their flanks, where they were mustering in great numbers to launch their attack, which they did the next day.
“It can be understood why we were without anything warm to drink while we were in the extreme front of the wood. To make a fire of any description or to show smoke of any kind would be to give the exact position away. It was the most dangerous job imaginable for the ration-party to keep up the supplies, and it was only accomplished with loss of life on each occasion rations were served out. Bully and mud make a nice mixture; this was our daily menu.
“Every one of the stretcher-bearers was worthy of recognition, as it was heroic work to carry the wounded to the dressing-station, for the nearest one was about a mile and a half through the wood. This was accomplished at a time when the high explosive shells were raising fountains of mud, slush, and earth, and the terrific roar of the explosions was deafening.”
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Victor Casson found that being a sniper was less useful than acting as a bombardier during action, so took to throwing Mills bombs. He had seen most of his company slaughtered by artillery the previous day, so returned to his funk hole, from where he helped repulse the night attacks.
“Between the hours of 5 am and 10 am of the 17th during the lull, I observed some distance away Gen Lukin accompanied by some of his staff peering through the fallen trees. Presumably they came to take note of the dispositions, after the awful bombardment of the night before. (The ‘staff were Gen Dawson, Capt Pepper and Lieut Sharpe formerly of the Wits Rifles).
“I approached Gen Lukin and said to him ‘Sir, apparently I am the only one of my company alive; everybody I can see are either dead or wounded.’ The general replied that I must remain at my position, as the brigade was about to be relieved. I retreated to my shell-hole cover to wait for what was going to happen next. That night I again used Mills bombs, boxes of them, when the Germans attacked. Most of the time they were only about 100 yards from my funk hole.
“On the night of the 17th all hell was let loose.”
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Private Maurice Cistel, 23, was born at Streatham, London, and at 16 years of age left home and emmigrated to South Africa. He became one of the founder members of the SA Defence Force, being No A61, serving in the CPR. At Delville Wood his overriding recollection was of spending his time wandering around looking for friends.
Fred Hampson found the fighting in the wood frustrating. “We were pinned down by snipers, unable to move, and we had no one to shoot at as they were camouflaged and dug in.”
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Private Thomas Holiday received his Blighty at about 7 pm.
“I was at battalion headquarters when three high-explosive shells burst there. One burst about two yards from me, and a splinter struck me in the face, missing my eye by an inch. I noticed a lot of blood dropping from my face, and obtained permission from an officer to go to the field dressing-station.
“From the latter place I was sent to the village of Maricourt, and whilst proceeding along the road, which was being heavily shelled at the time, my nerves gave way from exhaustion, and I had to be assisted to the dressing-station.”
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When Lieut-Col Tanner was hit by a bullet in the thigh about 7 pm his second-in-command, Major Gee of D Coy took over the 2nd battalion.
Major Harry Gee, 48, had joined the (Cape) Railway Service in 1889 and been employed in the Uitenhage Railway Workshop. He served throughout the South African War and commanded the Uitenhage Volunteer Rifles. Gee served as a captain in SWA and was specially selected for overseas service. He was promoted to major shortly after his arrival in England.
Major Gee was mortally wounded soon after and as there were no senior officers left in the 2nd, Major Heal of the 1st SAI took over the command. Lieut-Col Thackeray took over the command of the garrison in the wood.
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Second-Lieutenant A T Wales, 23, was the son of Col Wales VD, of Pretoria. After schooling at Pietermaritzburg he worked at the Premier Mine. Wales joined the Natal Light Horse then transferred to the NMR for service in SWA. He joined the 2nd SAI as a lance-corporal and served in Egypt. He had just been commissioned when he was mortally wounded at Delville Wood and died on 17 July.
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Private William Philip Pitout, 42, had been an excellent athlete in his youth. The amputation of four toes on his right foot ended that. Willie Pitout came from Willowmore, Cape. After leaving school he opened a store and in 1898 married a widow, Maggie Barnard, born Pace. They had two sons, Solomon (Lomie) born in 1900, and Robert Reginald (Reggie), born in 1902. When Maggie died from childbirth complications in 1905, Reggie, 3, never forgot that Lomie had picked him up to see his dead mother through a window.
Willie Pitout remarried Bertha Snyman in 1907 and they had a son and a daughter. Pitout then worked as a water-boring engineer. When the war began he joined the Midland Mounted Rifles, then after 18 months transferred to the Irrigation Engineering Corps.
At Delville Wood Pitout found himself dodging falling trees. It was a frightening experience for a man from the arid Karroo, where large trees were few and far between. He felt that more men were killed and injured by the falling trees than by bullets. Some of those crushed or pinned down by the shattered trees were later killed by shell-fire or by the enemy when they swept over the positions.
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Private Stanley Dunston, 30, was a steel metal worker from Umzinto, Natal. He had served in the Durban Light Infantry for eight years. In Delville Wood he and Pte J L Grainger handled and worked a Lewis gun with the greatest gallantry.
Their company suffered heavy losses. Despite a galling fire they stuck to and worked their gun with such efficiency as to drive an enemy attack back when only 15 yards distant.
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George Garnet Tanner, 22, of East London was no relation to Col Tanner. His two brothers, Douglas, 28 and St
anley, 25, also served but were not in the wood. Garnet had served four years in the Kaffrarian Rifles, including service in SWA, before being discharged in March 1915 for defective vision. He joined the brigade and had a relapse of eye trouble in Egypt.
He was sent back by his company commander (Major Gee) at a critical moment to explain the serious position the company was placed in, as the majority had been killed or wounded.
To carry out his instructions he had to penetrate a devastating barrage and unflinchingly faced it and although successful in making the report to battalion headquarters, it was seen that he was badly shell-shocked, having been blown up.
In spite of this and although suffering considerably and very badly shaken, Tanner insisted upon returning with the reply. Colonel Tanner did not consider that he was in a fit state to make the attempt, but no other man was available and he was permitted to go, although he recognised that he had been given and accepted a most dangerous task owing to the terrific fire of all description.
He later described how he was blown up and buried alive. “A shell landed alongside me. Fortunately the ground was very soft and the shell must have penetrated quite far before it exploded. All I knew was that I was blown up into the air and must have gone fairly high because it was enough for me to turn a somersault and come down head first into the crater.
“When I fell the sides of the shell-hole piled in on me and pinned me so that I couldn’t move and I felt myself suffocating. But I could feel that I had one leg free so waved it like the very devil to try and attract attention. Other chaps lying nearby saw me and managed to extricate me.”
Garnet Tanner was well aware of the risks he ran. “I was a despatch runner from company to brigade. Very few despatch runners came out alive, as you were subject to fire from all directions when you were out in the open.
“The last message I took down from Coy HQ was to say that the Germans were attacking and the message was asking for reinforcements. I brought up a major who was then in command, as the colonel had been hit. All the men he could gather was about 25.”
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Sergeant Wilfred Brink set up his casualty collecting post at the entrance to the wood near Col Thackeray’s headquarters. Padre Eustace Hill made a fire to brew tea nearby and soon afterwards shells began falling around them. Thackeray rose from his dug-out and shouted, ‘Who’s that bloody fool there?’
‘It’s Father Hill, sir … making tea!’ came the reply. Brink was amused by the colonel’s rejoinder. ‘Well tell him to get the hell out of it. He’s attracting fire.’ Brink continued supervising the evacuation of the wounded.
“We couldn’t get too far into the wood because the shelling was so bad. We had a regimental aid-post and a first field dressing-station near Longueval. So we worked from the wood into Longueval. I lost two squads of bearers there.
“While I was supervising we came under terrific machine-gun fire. You always had to cast your eyes from left to right looking for a shell-hole to drop into to get below the surface from the machine-guns. It was then that I got a terrific blow on my left arm like from a cricket bat. It knocked me over and killed the fellows who were with me.
“I was bleeding like anything. A wounded sergeant of the Black Watch, a broad Scot, was in a nearby shell-hole. He helped me in. My shirt was coated in blood, but he took it and tied up my shattered upper arm. I lost a lot of blood and got terribly thirsty. The Scot disappeared from the shell-hole later. I think he died. Fortunately I remained conscious or I would have been buried alive by the incessant shelling.”
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Meanwhile urgently needed supplies were being held up at Montauban. The transport of the 3rd and 4th SAI was blocked in the road by a barrage of shells and gas. Quartermaster-Sgt W F Davies and Sec-Lieut R D Grierson of the 4th SAI man-handled wagons loaded with French mortars and assisted in clearing the jam at the time. The drivers could not be called from their animals to assist him.
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Ernest Solomon records that it was not only the Germans that shelled them.
“Shells from our artillery began to fall among us. One gun, it appeared, had been misdirected, and hasty and frequent messages had to be sent by runners to the artillery officer concerned before it lifted, but not before it had killed several of our men.
“We cursed that artillery officer, whoever he was, as an incompetent ass.
“During the night of the 17th, some duty took me to headquarters and to the first-aid station. At the former place lay one of our two stretcher-bearers, badly wounded and unable to be moved at the time. He was very cheerful and quite pleased when he told me he had a Blighty. Poor fellow, he was killed the next day before he could be taken to a place of safety.
“At the first-aid station was Father Hill, chaplain to the 3rd, sitting over a fire in the open making coffee for the wounded, quite regardless of his own personal safety. The artillery officers objected to his fire as it was too conspicuous, and told him to extinguish it, but he ignored them. Many a wounded man blessed him for his untiring and unselfish efforts on their behalf.”
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Tom Heunis’ half-section, Pte Rudolph Blom, was shot by a sniper. The bullet cut across his eyes. He was blinded by blood and pain, so Heunis bandaged him then left his rifle and half-carried him to a dressing-station at the edge of the wood (probably in the southwest). Dr Liebson was using a ruined barn which was filled with casualties.
Blom’s blood-soaked bandage was in his hand when Heunis left. He then saw a shell-shocked youngster holding his stomach and crying for his mother. Heunis assisted him to the dressing-station. On leaving the second time he looked toward Longueval and saw a sea of kilts. Hundreds of dead Scotsmen covered the ground. A sight he would never forget. With a heavy heart and empty hands he trudged back to his company’s position.
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Dick Unwin was one of the sharpshooters of the company. The snipers’ insignia on his sleeve meant that in a brigade of crack-shots he was outstanding. The mud and water which collected in their trenches forced them to tie sacking around their legs and boots. This together with his brown webbing and uniform blended in the muddy shell-torn wood to form a perfect sniper’s camouflage.
He could hold his own against the enemy snipers — but had no defence against the German shells. Those which hit the trees exploded, blowing the trees to pieces and spraying the men who crouched below in the trenches with hot shrapnel balls and jagged slivers of shell casing.
At about 2 pm a shell burst above Unwin, sending shrapnel ripping through his steel helmet to wound him behind his neck. One of his friends removed his smashed helmet and placed a dressing on the gash behind his head.
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Dudley Meredith and his group were on their own in South Street.
“On our side of the wood we were in small batches in isolated small trenches. We saw very little of officers or NCOs and as we had no means of communication, orders were passed down the line from group to group. Gradually, as the German bombardment increased in severity, the distance between the knots of survivors lengthened. One evening during a lull I took a can of water along our lines and was amazed to find as much as fifty and seventy-five yards between the different detachments.
“The Germans were fairly methodical in their bombardment of the wood and we experienced a lull usually in the early morning and again in the late afternoon. During the rest of the day, however, the area was constantly under heavy shell fire, while during the night it was an inferno of flame and smoke. Our orders were to hold on and so we crouched in our little trenches, while our numbers dwindled as our comrades were wounded or killed.
“At the end of the first day in the wood C Coy had a strength of about forty-eight men — at the end of the third day one company in the front edge could muster only eight men. It was no wonder that without Very lights or telephones and with the constant expectations of counter-attacks, added to the reduction in our numbers, we began to feel very apprehensive, although there was no wavering in our inten
tion to hold on until we were relieved or killed.
“Rain now added to our discomfort and crouching in our miserable little trenches we and our rifles became covered with a pasty yellow layer of mud, while clods and broken branches showered down upon us and acrid fumes almost choked us. There could be no hope of relief, no hope of respite in the face of such violent shell fire and grimly we determined to face another day.”
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Harry Cooper would never forget the bravery and fortitude of the wounded.
“The smell of blood, iodine and cordite began to get really bad. High-explosive shells were uprooting trees as you would pull up a weed and the smoke from bursting shells was like a pall over the whole wood.
“Men were dying and many were lying badly wounded all over the place and some of the sights were ghastly. It was marvellous how some of them, disembowelled, were living, asking for cigarettes or water when they should have been dead long ago.
“During one of my trips I saw a couple of fellows trying to help another fellow to a place of safety. I saw his face, or what was left of it, and recognised him. One of the most likeable fellows you could wish to meet, always had a joke on hand and he was what you might term my ‘buddy’.
“The grin was there but what a mess his body was in. He was put somewhere to be picked up later, but I never saw him again and can only surmise that he was placed among the growing heap of dead.
“On another trip I saw some men carrying an officer, a colonel of one of the other regiments (Col Tanner), on an improvised stretcher. He was in a bad way and kept shouting, ‘Take me back to my men’; but these men carried on oblivious to all the shelling and bullets … The colonel reached safety and lived to fight in many more battles.
“Things were getting very bad now, wounded were not able to get much attention and water was hard to get. A pal of mine, also a runner, joined me in helping our regimental doctor (Capt Liebson) do what we could for the wounded.
“This doctor was only a young chap of Jewish extraction, and what a man! He appeared to fear nothing and worked like a Trojan dishing out tablets and bandaging with what he could get hold of; but he was facing a hopeless task.