The Somme (11 page)

When the Germans made their big Push in the spring of 1918, we were on the right flank of the British line, leading a gipsy life in the forest country between Noyon and Laon. Immediately in front of us lay La Fère, hidden in the woods of St. Gobain, and our own position was that of support-battalion in the Bois de Coucy, just south of the Oise River. I say that this was our position, but in point of fact I knew little about it. For more than a fortnight, thanks to the prosaic infliction of a sore leg, I had been resting in a field-hospital.

On the 20th March the ambulance brought me back to the horse-lines, three or four kilometres behind no-man's-land. My feet had barely touched ground when the old familiar atmosphere of surmise and vague suspicion closed round me like a fog. For weeks, you will remember, the Allies in the west had been kept on the knife-edge of suspense. When would the Germans launch their offensive? When and where? No one knew, but the humblest private had his theory, and the nearer you were to the line the wilder and more circumstantial grew the rumours. Even before my holiday we had more than once been the victims of a premature alarm. ‘Jerry' was coming over to-day, or to-night, or to-morrow at dawn. Orders and counter-orders circulated dizzily, elaborate preparations were made and cancelled; the waiting and uncertainty keyed men's nerves to an intense pitch of apprehension; and always nothing happened.

The Fifth Army had recently taken over a wide sector from the French, and, as is now well known, the available troops were insufficient to hold it. The system of defences in a notoriously quiet region had been long neglected, and were now entirely inadequate. Foch's strategic Reserve (for even thus early we called it his) was doubtless ready and waiting to go wherever it might be called, but local supports of our own were an unknown quantity.

Since the 6th February the battalion had been out of the line only four days, and these were spent in moving from one place to another. Moreover, be the line never so quiet, the life in cramped and stuffy dug-outs, the long days passed in patrol work and sentry duty, the makeshift rations, the lack of baths and clean clothes – all these things tell on men's nerves and weaken their stamina. Over and above these normal troubles was the sense of great and terrible events in preparation, of a storm soon to burst no one knew where. On our front the Germans were quiet enough (too quiet according to the experts), but we spared no efforts to strengthen our defences. Night and day we dug new trenches, and wired and camouflaged them feverishly. At other times we carried strange burdens from the transport lines to the trenches, where, thanks to hard work, we slept like logs and fed like famished savages. And each day we ‘stood-to' in the frosty dawn for an attack that was always postponed to to-morrow.

For myself, I was a disconsolate schoolboy at the end of his holiday, and, the spell of routine broken, I came back to the line perhaps stronger in body, but in spirit more than ever unwilling. Almost at once I learned that I had returned at an unlucky moment. As I left the Chauny highway for the road that climbs the hill to Sinceny, a divisional-signaller told me that all troops were ‘standing-to' and that stragglers had been recalled to quarters. After the freedom from toil and worry that makes the roughest field-ambulance so desirable a refuge, this news sent my spirits to zero. The mouse was safely in the trap again, and this time the cat was waiting for him. For a solitary journey such as mine breaks a man's courage; it is only when he is alone that such sickly imaginings have him at their mercy. Among his chums he has other things to think of.

Our Reserve Company was billeted in huts by the wayside and the men were standing to arms, ready to march. Dispatch-riders raised clouds of dust on the road, and a Brigadier passed in his car like a pale image of evil tidings. A sergeant-major, with a great show of unconcern, gave me his opinion that the whole thing was ‘pure wind up.' Brigade Headquarters was near at hand, however, and there I sought out a friend whose duties in the canteen brought him into close touch with the Mighty. But although attaching superstitious importance to any news from so exalted a quarter, I could learn little from him. Certainly an attack was expected; it might materialize or it might not. That was the sum of his knowledge; but I could see from the anxious faces of the satellites that hover ever in the shadow of the Staff that this time something was going to happen.

Nothing out of the way marked my journey to the line. Sinceny village had been smashed and gutted from end to end – deliberate damage effected by the Germans in their retreat to the Hindenburg Line a year ago. An empty doll's carriage stood crazily upon a heap of broken bricks. The gaudy wirework decorations in the tombs in the churchyard were broken and strewn upon the ground. The gravestones themselves were torn and shattered.

The usual rumours were afloat at Battalion Headquarters, and I heard that after this present spell in the line the Division was going to Italy, Egypt and Salonica. Like many another unit, we were always on the point of departure for the Antipodes, but a perverse destiny never allowed us to start. We discussed the possibilities of leave, and decided that recent declarations in Parliament could not but improve matters. As to the enemy's offensive, perhaps it would never come; and if it did, it would fail and be a thing of the past long before midsummer. It would be his last effort and, once we had weathered it, the end could not be much longer delayed. The coming of a group of R.A.M.C. men, detached from a field-ambulance for special service, sobered us a little, but we had heard the cry of ‘Wolf' too often and laughed at their fears. Within a week the joke was a sour one.

Headquarters lay in dug-outs beneath twin hills known as the Buttes de Rouy, and the road threaded the valley between them to the village of Amigny-Rouy, where I hoped to find my Company. At dusk I followed the ration-carts through the deserted village, smashed like Pompeii of old, smashed in cold blood by bomb and mine and fire. The bright moonlight could not lighten the sombre sadness of its desolation, and memories and regrets lurked sadly among the shadows. Each house was a mangled skeleton – the windows blown out, the walls for the most part ruinous. In several places an interior lay exposed in section like a builder's plan, the intimacies of wall-paper and furniture clinging crazily to the tottering walls. Piles of rubble surrounded these grotesque ruins, and only the main road had been cleared for traffic.

It was a still and peaceful evening. Not a gun was firing, and the crack of a sniper's rifle or the quick chatter of machine-guns broke rarely through the silence. Woodland odours scented the air and, away from the shattered husk of the village, the smirch of War could easily be forgotten. But as dusk grew to dark, bright Verey lights soared high above the trees, climbed and hovered and fell, and changed the dark forest into fairyland.

My platoon I found in one of half a dozen intercommunicating dug-outs, dark narrow caverns, buried thirty feet below ground and, unless shell-fire blocked the entrances, safe from everything but gas. My return was hailed as a miracle of ill-fortune, for up here in the line every one seemed resigned to the worst. Letters and rations distributed, we exchanged contradictory rumours, and tried to draw comfort from a local theory that no German attack could by any possibility reach us through the thickly-wired forest.

The dug-out was lined on either side with a double tier of wire cots, like bunks in a ship's cabin. Each cot afforded its owner just room enough to lie curled up like a cat. Close to his hand were rifle, helmet, and gas-mask. His equipment lay at his feet, and his pillow was a greasy knapsack; ground-sheet and leather jerkin softened the scanty straw; his body he rolled in a muddy blanket.

Rations for to-morrow were stored in mess-tin and haversack, where bread and cheese and raisins, butter and bully-beef, socks and soap and chocolate, mingled affectionately together.

A candle-end, welded by its own grease to the timber-work of the dug-out, gave a smoky, flickering light: a careless elbow now and again jerked it head-long into the straw.

That night the narrow cots held some thirty men, who were unable to sit upright unless they swung their legs over the edge of their bed and crooked their necks to avoid the rough wire and timber. Some were brewing tea in mess-tins over ingenious portable cookers (made from cans of rifle-oil, with strips of ‘four by two' for wick, or from rags floating in a tin of melted dubbin). Others were eating their supper, killing lice, cleaning rifles, writing letters, playing noisily at cards, reading, quarrelling, shaving and sleeping. So long as they were awake they were all busy. Meditation was unpopular.

Early in the evening the growl of guns had broken out northwards towards St. Quentin, but now all was quiet again. It was intense drum-fire while it lasted, however, and might well carry a definite warning. We drank the rum-ration, an all too scanty mouthful (the sergeants knew why); we blew out the lights; save for the whisper of the sentries by the brazier in the doorway, all was quiet in the dug-out. ‘Get as much rest as you can, boys, for you may have a busy day to-morrow.'

We were aroused by the grumbling thunder of guns. For a few minutes those who were first awake lay half-conscious of the sound and wondering idly what it might mean: then came remembrance and with it fear. Lights gleamed here and there in the gloom and men rose in their cots and asked one another what was the matter. They knew only too well, but it comforted them to ask. In a few minutes someone went outside to see how things were going, but almost immediately he returned in company with the gas-guards nominally on duty. As they blundered down the stairs one man caught his finger in his trigger, and fired mercifully into the floor. The noise and the acrid smell of the explosion thoroughly aroused us. There was no longer any doubt; the long-threatened day had dawned at last.

The noise of the gun-fire was deadened by the long double flight of stairs and the two heavy gas-curtains made of Army blankets, but the sentries reported that a heavy barrage was falling some hundred yards behind the line of the dug-outs. That there was danger was evident from their haggard faces and nervous, jerky movements. Obviously they had stood at their posts until lonely men could endure no longer.

The attack could not come before dawn, and we thus had before us at least three hours of nerve-racking idleness. Would they man battle positions now, or wait for daylight? Suspense and ignorance were maddening, and, feeling I could remain quiet no longer, I determined to venture above ground.

In a moment I left behind me the warmth and light of the dug-out, the comforting presence of my fellow-prisoners, and the sound and solace of their voices. The dull growl and rumble outside grew abruptly louder and more menacing. In the dense darkness of the stairs I groped my way slowly from landing to landing, finding the gas-curtains by blundering into them, and tripping over the weighted blocks that held them down. At the mouth of the shelter the night was as dark as the pit. Behind the German lines thousands of guns were in action, the sound of their firing like water bubbling in a cistern – like, but infinitely louder. From the east there rushed a steady, never-ceasing stream of shells, the clamour of their onset rising to a menacing climax overhead. Despite their hideous roar and racket, they gave me the impression that they were in no sort of hurry, but intended to persevere in their remorseless task of destruction until all resistance had been smashed to dust and ashes. A little way ahead, among the shattered houses and orchards of Amigny, they were bursting with a ringing, rending crash, magnified, if that were possible, by the echo from the walls. The glare of explosions stained the night like lightning. Everywhere I could hear the whizz and ping of scattering fragments.

The danger was real enough, though the darkness and the early hour exaggerated it, and it was with a sinking heart that I stumbled downstairs again to the perplexed Council of War among the shadows. And there we remained for several hours, wondering and conjecturing and prophesying. It seemed clear enough that we were cut off from our supports by the bombardment, but we had no means of discovering what was happening elsewhere. We were a little group of shipwrecked adventurers, isolated from the world, boxed up in a cave, and liable to instant death or mutilation if we left our shelter. For that is the danger of dug-outs – they sap the morale of those who use them. It is safe down there, and the temptation is to stay down indefinitely until the enemy appears at the entrance with bomb and rifle.

The gun-fire was growing heavier, and crashing blows drove home apparently just overhead. Deadened though they were by the thickness of earth, yet the ground shook, the candles shuddered, and a dull concussion blunted our senses. Sometimes two or three buffets fell in quick succession on the roof. What must be the turmoil outside when such an effect could be felt thirty feet below ground? Suppose a shell blocked the stairways! It is another disadvantage of thus hiding in safety that dismal forebodings darken a mind that has no necessary work to distract it. I imagined a feverish digging for life, while the air grew slowly fouler and strength failed relentlessly.

It was essential that someone should take over the gas-guard, but the service was not a popular one. The sentry must stand in the open and, from the scanty shelter of a wooden sentry-box, be ready to sound the alarm on a wooden rattle or an empty shell-case used bell-fashion. Even short spells of half an hour thus employed seemed an eternity, and the relief men sometimes sought to escape duty by pretending to doze in their bunks. The danger was invested with the horror of the unknown and imperfectly realized, and we tried in vain to extract grains of comfort from the sentries as they returned. ‘How's things up above, chum? Is it light yet? Is he slacking off?' And always the same reply: ‘Pretty thick, mate. Pretty thick.'

Once there came an alarm and the sweetish, cloying smell of ‘pineapple gas.' We muzzled ourselves in our masks and sat for a time in a compulsory silence, like a legion of dumb and hideous devils, but the heat of the masks, the blindness caused by condensed moisture on the windows, the foul taste of the rubber mouthpieces, the choking pressure of the nose-clips – these various torments made us ready to take risks. Men were continually removing their masks in order to taste the air, and for the most part held them hanging from their cases.