The Somme (12 page)

Breakfast was an affair of bread and cheese and water, for the cook-house, a crazy shed of corrugated iron some hundred yards from shelter, was deserted and inaccessible. It was certain that this was the last meal some of us would ever eat, but on the surface at all events we preserved a semblance of cheerfulness. Again and again we told one another that the attack, when it came (for we were so far resigned now), must needs break itself upon our elaborate preparations. Thus, above a current of fear and disgust we yet managed to build a bridge of hope, and we built it of various materials. Some were feverishly gay, and sang and laughed for all the world like men on a picnic. Others took refuge in a light-hearted cynicism, and assumed that the worst always happens and that nothing goes right beneath the sun – a useful pose beneath which Atkins habitually hides his deeper feelings. Others again remained impassive and resolutely unimpressed. My own feeling was of exasperation at being caught so narrowly in the trap. Spoiled by a fortnight's good living, and morbidly convinced that bad would go to worse, I had an uneasy consciousness of a tired battalion dispirited and exhausted by weeks of anxious forebodings.

The meal was too poor to cheer us after the manner of bacon and hot tea, and afterwards we had nothing to do but forecast the future. Some of the men, too excited to rest, took refuge in cards and argument, but the majority simply squatted in their bunks, waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Can you imagine that dark, gloomy, noxious cavern, lit dimly by guttering candles and ever and again shaken by the tremendous concussions overhead; the dirty, haggard faces asking dumbly why this horror had come upon them? They were waiting to be called into an inferno of iron and lead and choking gases, where dust and smoke and monstrous spouts of earth were writhing among shattered houses, and trees and hedges were splintering fast to matchwood. It is a damning admission, and one probably unique in the annals of War, but the spirit of the troops was not entirely excellent.

At length our fears were realized, and the Captain of our Company roused us to man battle positions. Mr. Stewart was a tough, hard-bitten little Scotsman and, out since Mons, was by no means prone to panic; but then, if ever, I read in his face an ill-controlled foreboding. Scourged by his impatience, we seized rifles and equipment and stumbled clumsily towards the stairs. Dawn had broken outside, but a thick mist hid the sun. The Germans could have asked for nothing better. You could not see ten yards.

Once outside and hurrying towards the trenches, we lost that feeling of trapped helplesssness that made the dugout so terrible a resting-place. The bombardment was now falling on the village some forty or fifty yards behind us, and Amigny was visibly falling to pieces. Clouds of dust and smoke, rose-coloured from the shattered brick-work, rose continually among the collapsing houses, and from these shifting volcanoes there rained bricks and timber and clods of earth and splintered trunks of trees. On the hard pavé of the roads the shells could make but little impression (although there they were the more dangerous by reason of flying fragments of stone), but elsewhere they dug smoking craters in the scorched and tumbled meadows.

Ducking our heads instinctively, we hurried towards a narrow fire-trench that opened from a lane that four years ago was a leafy haunt of lovers. The shelter was meagre, but we entered it with an ostrich sigh of satisfaction. This was no consolidated line with revetted traverses and sand-bagged parapet, but merely a roughly dug and tortuous ditch, perhaps six feet deep and for the most part three feet wide. The crumbling fire-steps were growing muddy with the thaw of last night's frost. A hit anywhere near the brink of the trench would have smashed it in an instant, but by crouching frogwise below the parapet we found shelter from ground-shrapnel.

Distributing ourselves in groups of two and three along the trench, we mounted our Lewis guns with pans fully charged for firing, leaned cocked rifles with fixed swords against the parapet, and removed from bandoliers all surplus ammunition. And everybody lit a cigarette. It is well known that the consumption of cigarettes varies directly with the strength of the bombardment. To crouch in a hole, thinking of what may be about to happen – that way lies madness. Four cynics even made bold to defy Fate with a game of nap.

While we stood smoking, Captain Stewart and his batman appeared suddenly above the parapet. The latter was carrying a dozen S.O.S. rockets, which he distributed among us with the air of a man bestowing charity. Poor ‘Minnie' West, so nicknamed by reason of a falsetto voice and a finicking manner, did not appear to enjoy his errand, ducked nervously at any nearer shell, and grinned only half-heartedly at sarcastic references to Guy Fawkes. Immediately to our right the trench-line turned backwards among the last houses of the village, and was accordingly exposed to the full strength of the barrage. The right flank of the Company was thus the post of greatest danger, and in a few minutes came the call for stretcher-bearers. Minnie had been unlucky. For that is the Army's formula of sympathy. A man has been blown to pieces, or detailed to peel potatoes, or drowned in a shell-hole, or robbed of his rations. His friends have only one comment to make: ‘He's unlucky.' And after all, what more is there to say?

All the morning we remained idle in the trench. Whenever a shell fell short we ducked and dodged convulsively, aware of the futility of such action, but powerless to avoid it. Shell splinters flew past our heads and between our legs, and once a fragment of jagged steel whizzed viciously against the back of a man who was peacefully writing letters. For a moment we thought that he was wounded, but the crossed straps of his equipment had softened the blow, and beneath the half-severed leather there was nothing to see but a dull red bruise. Every one sympathized with him, and he resumed his letter in the spirit of a man with a grievance. To miss a ‘Blighty One' is the great misfortune. Any moderate degree of maiming carries with it the certainty of rest and peace and cleanliness, and (who knows?) the possibility of the crowning mercy of a ‘ticket.'

Somewhere about noon a shell knocked out an isolated Strong Point on our right flank, smashed the Lewis gun, and killed three of the gunners. Shortly afterwards another shell fell within a yard of the survivors as they were busily mounting another gun. This time no one was wounded, but the concussion stunned the Section-leader; and his chums, demoralized by misfortune, took matters into their own hands and abandoned their post. With them they dragged laboriously the unconscious corporal, blackened with stinking smoke, groaning feebly, and bleeding from nose and ears. In a little while, however, he had recovered, and they were once again mounting their gun in a new and safer position.

For this desertion they stood in little danger of a reprimand. Save for the Captain's visit just after our arrival we had so far seen only one officer – a subaltern who made one hurried tour of the trench and then vanished suddenly in the direction of Headquarters. And indeed at such times it is often no easy matter for Atkins to discover the whereabouts of those leaders he is universally reputed to adore. Normally, on these occasions the parade-martinets and inspectors of brass buttons are far too busy organizing victory in a dug-out to concern themselves with discipline, and thus the deserters need have no fear of either discovery or punishment.

Twelve hours had passed since our first arousing, and still there was no sign of an attack. Away to the north the roar of the bombardment seemed louder than ever, and mingled with it we could now hear the deadliest sound in warfare, the angry chatter of machine-guns. All the afternoon their staccato rattle continued. We guessed that a fierce attack was being pushed to desperation beyond the river, but no one knew with what success. I say no one knew, but towards evening the first definite rumours crept to us by way of runners from Battalion Headquarters. The Germans, so they said, had attacked over the whole front from Arras to La Fère, and had broken through a five-mile sector to a depth of three. There was also current a suspiciously circumstantial story that south of the river they would follow up a nine hours' high-explosive bombardment with four hours' gas shelling as a prelude to attack. We were in no mood to disbelieve the wildest tales and, cleaning and re-cleaning our rifles argued and speculated continually. Long after noon, however, the big howitzer shells were still bursting in a steady stream. Four o'clock came and no gas alarm! It seemed probable we should see no Germans until to-morrow.

During the afternoon the cooks ventured to light fires in the open. They boiled water for tea, and even fried some war-worn bacon; and with this, our rations of bread and cheese, and a tin of sardines, we made what was almost a cheerful meal. ‘The grub puts guts into you,' and we now felt twice the men to grapple with our troubles. In retrospect it seems amusing enough to pause midway in a mouthful of bread and bacon in order to estimate the changing range of the barrage. The ear automatically picks out from the roar of the bombardment the angry whirr of one shell nearer than others. Should the threat pass very closely, every one crouches as flat as may be among the sooty dixies, mingling gulped tea with lurid blasphemy. The noise of an express train grows in a swift crescendo, passes overhead with a vicious, deep-toned hum, and, changing suddenly to a fiercely-purposeful, downward-rushing whizz, culminates not twenty yards away in the shattering roar of an explosion that resembles nothing so much as the careless unloading of a cargo of iron rails. And so back to tea and bacon.

Towards evening the fog melted beneath a jovial sun that mocked men's madness from a cloudless sky. We could now see the flat fields ahead, covered with the rustling skeletons of last year's uncut hay, and the tortuous line of our wire half-way towards the forest. Danger of surprise being thus greatly lessened, some of the men were allowed to return to the dug-out for two hours' rest. Down in the gloom of the cave the noise of the guns slackened to a hoarse rumbling, and, free for the moment from the fear of pouncing danger, we could relax tired limbs in the straw and forget our troubles in an instant slumber. This two hours' shelter from the storm came to us like a reprieve to a condemned man. It seemed almost criminal to waste such precious moments in sleep, but the majority could not have remained awake had their lives depended on it. They sank like logs into their cots, and, when roused again two hours later, grumbled venomously that they had not been resting for five minutes.

We stood-to in the half-light of dusk, and then waited in bright moonlight that presently faded to darkness lit by the gleam of guns. Towards midnight all save two men at each post were recalled to the dug-out; outside, the unlucky sleepy sentries watched patiently for dawn. And so ended for us one of the bloodiest days in the history of that bloodstained year. We had escaped the worst, and our casualties were few. But how were we to interpret those sinister rumours of events across the river?

The two succeeding days we passed on a knife-edge of perplexity and apprehension. On the third evening we had official news from Corps Headquarters that the enemy had broken completely through the advanced posts and battle positions of the Fifth Army, and was thought to be within a few miles of Chauny. This was serious news indeed, for if he should enter the town and destroy the bridges over the Oise, we should be cut off by the river, not only from the remainder of the Division, but from the whole British Army. The lines of communication directly to our rear were used entirely by the French, and all our supplies came from the north-west. The forest extended to within little more than a mile of Chauny, and if this narrow gap were once closed, our only line of retreat must pass through the tangled thickets of the Bois de Coucy, where it would be impossible to maintain either coherence or discipline. No rumour was too wild to find backers. A French Army Corps was detraining behind us. (This I was afterwards able to confirm: it was part of Foch's Army of Manœuvre.) Five hundred men were besieged in Fort Vendeuil. The Guards had relieved the garrison there and swept the Germans back to the river.

In this welter of confusion and contradiction no one knew what to believe, and nerves and tempers alike were chafed to desperation. Anxiety played strange tricks with us. One man muttered to himself continually, gazing at the ground with strained, bloodshot eyes and answering not a word to question or entreaty. After a time his mutterings grew louder. ‘Here's a bloody mess. Here's a bloody mess.' Again and again he repeated these words, and neither threats nor laughter could rouse him. So obstinate an introspection could have but one end, and at roll-call on the third day he did not answer his name. Fear had unhinged his mind. What became of him I never discovered.

Our days we spent in the trenches, sometimes asleep, but for the most part keeping our cover. The news gradually confirmed our fears. It became more and more certain that we were outflanked on our left, and to guard against this new danger we began digging trenches and Strong Points at right angles to the existing line. Wire we had none, but we hid the newly turned earth under swathes of weeds and grasses and took advantage of hedges and trees for cover. The night we parcelled out between us so that two men shared guard for a couple of hours at each post. By the time ten men had completed their turns dusk had changed to dawn, and once again we stood-to in expectation of the crisis.

The barrage seemed to slacken slightly after the first twelve hours, but it may have been merely that we were growing accustomed to it. Communication with Headquarters was often interrupted, and the telephone more often than not useless. The signallers were thus constantly at work upon the ground-wires in search of a breakage, and no considerations of danger were allowed to hinder their almost continuous labours. Somehow the wires were repaired; somehow the ration-parties struggled through the barrage. These journeys were deservedly unpopular, but they were an essential service, and few escaped their varied excitements.