Boy Soldiers of the Great War (24 page)

The London Scottish had suffered severe losses getting to the German wire, which remained uncut in many places, but the enemy’s position became increasingly untenable as men from other units began to surround them. The Germans’ ammunition was running low and they were threatened with annihilation. Alec Stringer was there and watched while attempts were made to get the Germans to surrender. These attempts failed. Then:

While lying out in front of the German barbed wire and looking to our left we found to our amazement the Royal Field Artillery was galloping up the road from Vermelles towards Hulluch and the German front line. On swerving to the left, they unlimbered the guns and started to bombard the German front line and the uncut wire in the area in which we were to attack. Unfortunately, many horses and men were killed in this operation but it was a sight never to be forgotten. As a consequence, the Germans realized that they would eventually have to surrender: a German officer with 400 men surrendered to the regiment.

The marvel of so many men surrendering at once was commented on by everyone who was close by, including Ernest Fitchett:

When they found that they were defeated, they all walked out of their trenches with their hands above their heads, several hundred of them in all, we then went on and took their second line quite easily but they hung on to their third like glue.

Just as astonished was Dick Trafford.

When we got to the German line, the whole lot gave themselves up – they came over with their hands up. They were marched down together with one or two of our fellas, as they would have done on parade in their own regiment, amazing.

It was early afternoon when the surrender came. The Germans at this point in the line had held out for around eight hours. The net result of the morning’s attacks in the centre of the line had been satisfactory, if costly. A hole had been punched through the enemy’s defences that they were frantically trying to repair. Although the attack a couple of miles to the north had failed almost completely, there had been considerable initial success to the south, where the gas had been blown across the German trenches; not only had Loos fallen quickly but Scotsmen of the 15th Division had been seen to charge up and down the far side of Hill 70, the best part of a mile beyond the town.

The fighting in the town of Loos was over by mid-morning, when all that was left was mopping up last-ditch resistance. Snipers were still active and casualties were being brought into a first-aid post set up by a medical officer of the Black Watch. He was treating the wounded in a house belonging to a Madame Moreau, one of many inhabitants who, amazingly, still occupied the town during the fighting. She lived there with her seventeen-year-old daughter Emilienne, and the pair of them spent the day helping to bring the wounded in, boiling up coffee and preparing food. Two German snipers, lodged in a house next door, had been firing at stretcher-bearers, and in her annoyance Emilienne seized a pistol from an officer. As soldiers attempted to dislodge the snipers, the teenager went round the back of the house and fired twice to cause a diversion, allowing the soldiers to enter and clear the building. She is reputed to have said, ‘
C’est fini
,’ as she returned, handing the pistol back to an astounded officer. Two months later, Emilienne Moreau was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Military Cross.

News of the success around Loos had to be exploited quickly. Haig required the reserves to attack in order to keep up the momentum, but they were nowhere to be seen. The reserves, comprising two New Army Divisions, the 21st and 24th, and the newly formed Guards Division, were being held the best part of five miles behind the front line and under the command of Sir John French. Haig would have to appeal to the commander-in-chief to release the men, and French was worried about committing inexperienced troops to the fray unless a breakthrough was evident. The news from the front was good and consent eventually given, but not until well after 1 p.m. were the reserves placed at Haig’s disposal, and then it was too late. The reserves, once ordered to move, would take many hours’ hard slog to get into position, by which time the Germans would be able to reinforce their lines and even counter-attack. Nowhere had success been greater than at Hill 70, and even here the gains made were rapidly lost. The men of the 15th Scottish Division had been brought to a standstill on the reverse side of the mound by the rifle fire of the hastily reinforced German third-line trench. German gunners had then blazed away at the slope on which the Scotsmen lay helpless and now German counter-attacks were retaking the summit. Not only were the British losing the upper hand, they were handing it directly to the Germans. Instead of being ready to go at midday or early afternoon, the two divisions of New Army men were not in a position to attack until the following morning, and the delay was irreparable.

After the German surrender of their first and second lines around Hulluch, relative peace suddenly reigned over the battlefield in front of the village, to the extent that men could scamper around looking for souvenirs. Then at dusk, the London Scottish had been reorganized and pushed on a little further, as Alec Stringer recalled. ‘We advanced up towards the Hulluch–Lens Road and D Company crossed over but could not hold it and had to come back over the road to join those of us that were left.’

The men finally dug in until relieved in the early hours of the morning. Returning to their old front line, a roll call was taken and Alec discovered that of his platoon only three men were left to answer their names.

During the hours of darkness, considerable confused fighting continued with the Germans launching several counter-attacks. Shortly before 10 p.m., the line held by the 2nd Gordons came under an increasingly well-directed bombardment, as Charlie Parke recalled.

The shelling was building up appreciably but there was no sign of movement from the other side; the usual pattern of German attacks involved an increasingly heavy barrage landing ever closer to the British line and, when it reached its maximum intensity, the German infantry would make its charge. The bombardment built up into a deafening crescendo but everyone still heard the ‘alert’ order from the Platoon Commander, an old sweat who might have had one or two shortcomings but whose vocal cords were never found wanting. To this order everyone responded immediately by mounting the ledge and fully manning the line; the enemy hadn’t made a move but the fantastically heavy barrage meant the charge was probably only minutes away.

As the 2nd Gordons prepared to meet the German attack, Charlie remembered the sixteen-year-old boy he had allowed to rest in a small recess dug in the rear wall of the trench.

Suddenly I remembered the newest and youngest member of the section was still in the parados wall. ‘How the hell could the kid sleep midst all that din?’ I asked myself. ‘Hey kid, get out here at the double!’ I screamed, using every decibel at my command. Still no movement from behind the sandbag material; I stepped down quickly from the ledge. ‘The kid’ll be in trouble if he doesn’t move fast,’ the thought flashed through my mind as I reached for the coarse curtaining.

The sight I saw I just couldn’t take in and for a split second was dumbstruck and, whatever I was, I was rarely at a loss for words. The lad was on his knees, his back to me, frantically tunnelling with his bare hands into the earth in a futile attempt to escape from the mayhem that was developing all around us. ‘C’mon lad!’ I shrieked, tugging at his tunic; the young soldier resisted with strength born of fear and all the time his two hands were clawing feverishly at mother earth. Blind panic, so terrifying to behold for even a hardened soldier, had not even allowed his common sense to select his entrenchment tool for the purpose. I forcibly grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him back into the trench. The sight of that brave underage boy lying on the duckboard shook me rigid. In less than half an hour, his entire head of hair had changed from close to black to virgin white; the horrendous sight was wellnigh unbelievable … The ravages of fear and terror had bleached his young looks in minutes and turned the boy into a frightful sight of half old and half young; everyone in the front line knew fear but to see it, visually, so stark and unhidden, was horrible.

The Gordons fought off the German counter-attack, the first of many that would eventually carpet the battlefield of Loos with bodies of friend and foe.

On the night of 25/26 September it had poured once again and brigades of the two New Army Divisions made their way forward into the fray. They were sodden, tired, hungry and heavily laden, and on their way into the line they were shelled and machine-gunned, causing casualties and confusion. Vague orders ensured that by the time morning broke, many New Army units were not where they were supposed to be. It was a recipe for disaster.

A new attack on Hill 70 would commence at 9 a.m. followed by renewed attacks around the village of Hulluch. A short bombardment hitting the German trenches on top would precede the assault but there were too few men to take and hold the Hill and, when the attack came, it was repulsed with heavy casualties. It
was the story of the day: time and again attacks went in only to be beaten back; late orders, vague orders and even vaguer objectives created confusion, a situation compounded by the inexperience of many units attacking for the first time. Battalions that had already been mauled were called on to renew the offensive but had too few men to make a difference. Ernest Fitchett went into the attack again with the South Wales Borderers.

We lost so many men, for three times in succession we charged at their lines and at last we broke through and advanced right into the village of Hulloch where we had to retire after some very fierce hand-to-hand fighting in which I lost my rifle and bayonet, and found a sword on a dead German officer. But we made another grand assault at dusk, and were fighting like tigers.

It was an impossible situation, even for experienced troops. Too often, men thrown into the attack had come up against the German line to find deep belts of uncut barbed wire with the ground in front swept by enemy machine-gun fire. Of the six New Army battalions that had attacked with the South Wales Borderers, over 2,500 were casualties by 12.30 p.m., only ninety minutes into the attack.

An hour later, and some surviving men of the New Army battalions were seen to retreat in disorder, casting away arms and equipment, much to the disgust of the regular units nearby. Ernest Fitchett wrote to his family.

I daresay that you have read in the papers of our big attack and advance and how ‘Kitchener’s New Army’ carried Hill 70. Well, it was not the New Army at all but the Old 1st Division that done the work and the New Army that got the praise.

He was rightly proud of his battalion, but after they were finally relieved later that night by men of the Guards Division, the
numbers were greatly depleted. Ernest estimated that out of his brigade of four battalions, perhaps 3,500 strong, only around 850 were left, and in his own battalion only 125 were still standing when they were left the line.

With the British forces spent, localized counter-attacks by the Germans were organized. That evening, the 26th, the Germans launched a counter-attack against the line held by the King’s Liverpools. An exhausted Dick Trafford helped fight one of the enemy’s attempts to regain lost trenches.

The Germans counter-attacked the day after when it was dusk. We couldn’t see them until they were almost on top of us. We only had one machine gun per company and this was positioned to kill as many Germans as possible. I knew the little gunner, Bob Grantham, he came from Ormskirk and he was in what we called the power pit, in the trench, and he had the machine gun trained to swing over and catch the Germans as they came over the Loos–Hulluch road. When they crossed the road the machine gun got most of them, but of course Bob couldn’t have watched the road all of the time. I was watching the machine gun when I suddenly looked up and this German was stood on the top of the trench ready to jump down with his bayonet, which would have gone well into me, but instead Bob must have opened fire and instead of falling into the trench he fell the other way, luckily for me. He was a big man with a beard, a Bavarian Guard, I was told.

Not long after, one of the chaps shouted, ‘Hey, Dick, will you come over here and reach me a cigarette?’ I went over and saw that half of his shoulder was missing, well, he’d no arm left. He couldn’t get to his cigarettes so I got them from his pocket, looked for some matches, and lit one for him and put it in his mouth. A wounded man would always crave a cigarette and he’d had what he wanted, to help ease the pain. But he hadn’t two puffs on it when he conked out – he died there and then because the loss of blood must have been terrible. That was the end of him and my
second shock. I couldn’t say or do anything. I wouldn’t say that he was a close friend but he was a chap that I knew well.

On 29 September George Coppard, who had now turned seventeen, entered the battlefield. He was on his way to the Hohenzollern Redoubt, on the left flank of the British offensive, a place with a terrible reputation for vicious fighting. The shellfire was intense.

Our artillery – the howitzers at our backs, and the field guns on both sides of us – was firing flat out. Its deafening thunder threatened the eardrums. It was inspiring, though uncomfortable, for the eighteen-pounder shells were screaming just over our heads, an experience to which we were not yet accustomed …

At last we reached the top of a slope where the German front line had been before the attack. And there, stretching for several hundred yards on the right of the road, lay masses of British dead, struck down by machine-gun and rifle fire. Shells from enemy field batteries had been pitching into the bodies, flinging them into dreadful postures. As they mostly belonged to Highland regiments there was a fantastic display of colour from their kilts, glengarries and bonnets, and also from the bloody wounds on their bare limbs. The warm weather had darkened their faces and, shrouded as they were with the sticky odour of death, it was repulsive to be near them. Hundreds of rifles lay about, some stuck in the ground on the bayonet, as though impaled at the very moment of the soldier’s death as he fell forward.