Chapter XI: Part 11

In fair fight they were relentless, but they were kind to their prisoners. It is queer how hatred and kindness alternate in these men. One man told me the strangest tale with absolute truth, I am sure, because of his fine, steady eyes. He captured a big Saxon in a shell-hole the night before the attack. The man was wounded in the leg and back, but held a revolver, and was not too ill to fight. But he had no fight left in him when the Irishman jumped down to him.

“Are you going to kill me?” he asked, in good English.

“Sure, no,” said the Irishman. “But just put away that pistol, won’t you?” Then the Irish sergeant undid his own field dressing and bound up the man’s leg and back (it was all under the loud whistling of shells), and said, “Now get along with you back to your own lines, for faith I don’t mean any harm to you.”

So away went the German into Ginchy, and afterwards, no doubt, wished he hadn’t.

A tall Irishman, describing the great charge to me, said: “The small, little men went over with the greatest pluck, sir, so that it was a real pleasure to see. And the Jerry boys ran that fast the dust was in their throats, it was.”

“How did you get that Boche cap?” one man asked another. “Did you kill your man?”

“Did I kill him?... I brought down fourteen prisoners all by myself, I did, and if you don’t believe it, here’s my receipt for the same.”

He held out a slip of paper, and there sure enough was the officer’s receipt for the fourteen men.

One German climbed up a tree during the attack. He had a white cap-band and a white ribbon on his shoulder, and seemed to be signalling.

“Now, come down, Jerry,” shouted five Irishmen in a chorus. “If you don’t come down we’ll shoot you, we will.”

The man would not come down.

“And sure we shot him,” was the end of the story.

The honours of the day are with the Irish, and these gallant men hope—they spoke about it, pleadingly—that their losses will be filled up by Irishmen, so that the spirit of their regiments may be kept.

XXIX

THE COMING OF THE TANKS

1

SEPTEMBER 16

Another day of great remembrance has been given to our history by British troops, September the Fifteenth, that will not quickly pass out of the memory of our people, for on that day, which was yesterday, our soldiers broke through the enemy’s third line of defence and went out into open country, and gave staggering blows to that German war-machine which for two years, all but two months, seemed unbreakably strong against us.

It was a day of good success, yesterday. It was no longer a promise of future victory, dependent upon all the flukes and chances of war, with their awful hazards, but, for one day at least, not looking further, the real thing.

Our men had the taste of victory, and it was like a strong drug to their hearts, so that they laughed even while blood was streaming down their faces, and said: “It’s wonderful!” when they came limping off the battlefields with wounds on fire, and said: “We made ’em run like rabbits!” when they lay on stretchers and could not move without a groan.

And it was wonderful indeed. For this day of victory came after two and a half months of continued and most bloody fighting. This new British Army of ours had not had an easy walk through after its time of preparation and training in the dirty ditches of the old trench warfare.

The task that was set to our soldiers yesterday would have been formidable on the first day of a great offensive. Coming after two and a half months, it was startling in its boldness, and showed that our generals had supreme confidence in the men, in their own powers of organisation, and in the luck of battle that comes to those who have worked for it. The enemy believed that our offensive had petered out. There is much evidence for that.

They did not believe it possible that an army of our size and strength could carry on the attack at the same fierce pace. They cherished the hope that our divisions were broken and spent, that our stores of ammunition were giving out, and that our men were overtired.

They still had faith in their own gun-power, the defensive strength of a thousand guns against the British front, and it was a reasonable faith. They had been digging furiously on dark nights to strengthen the third line of defence—the famous Flers line, which was, they thought, to be the boundary of our advancing tide, and though they were anxious, and were counting up frightful losses on the Somme, they did not expect this last disaster to them.

Yesterday I saw their prisoners coming off the battlefields in droves, and to-day hundreds of them in the barbed-wire cages behind the lines. They were dazed men, filled with gloom, and tortured by a great bewilderment.

“It is your victory,” said one of their officers, speaking to me in French. “It is our defeat. I cannot understand.”

“Germany is _kaput_,” said one of their non-commissioned officers. He meant that Germany is down—“in the soup,” as our soldiers would say. It was an exaggeration, for Germany has still a lot of fight left in her, but it was the belief of her beaten soldiers yesterday.

Our men were exalted—excited by the smell of victory, exaggerating also our own gains gloriously in the belief that the “last great smash had been made, and that the end of this foul and filthy war is at hand.” They “went over” at dawn yesterday filled with the spirit of victory, and it was half the battle won.

2

Many of them went over, too, in the greatest good-humour, laughing as they ran. Like children whose fancy has been inflamed by some new toy, they were enormously cheered by a new weapon which was to be tried with them for the first time—“the heavily armoured car” mentioned already in the official bulletin.

That description is a dull one compared with all the rich and rare qualities which belong to these extraordinary vehicles. The secret of them was kept for months jealously and nobly. It was only a few days ago that it was whispered to me.

“Like prehistoric monsters. You know, the old Ichthyosaurus,” said the officer.

I told him he was pulling my leg.

“But it’s a fact, man!”

He breathed hard, and laughed in a queer way at some enormous comicality.

“They eat up houses and put the refuse under their bellies. Walk right over ’em!”

I knew this man was a truthful and simple soul, and yet could not believe.

“They knock down trees like matchsticks,” he said, staring at me with shining eyes. “They go clean through a wood!”

“And anything else?” I asked, enjoying what I thought was a new sense of humour.

“Everything else,” he said earnestly. “They take ditches like kangaroos. They simply love shell-craters! Laugh at ’em!”

It appeared, also, that they were proof against rifle bullets, machine-gun bullets, bombs, shell-splinters. Just shrugged their shoulders and passed on. Nothing but a direct hit from a fair-sized shell could do them any harm.

“But what’s the name of these mythical monsters?” I asked, not believing a word of it.

He said “Hush!”

Other people said “Hush!... Hush!” when the subject was alluded to in a remote way. And since then I have heard that one name for them is the “Hush-hush.” But their real name is Tanks.

For they are real, and I have seen them, and walked round them, and got inside their bodies, and looked at their mysterious organs, and watched their monstrous movements.

3

I came across a herd of them in a field, and, like the countryman who first saw a giraffe, said “Hell!... I don’t believe it.” Then I sat down on the grass and laughed until the tears came into my eyes. (In war one has a funny sense of humour.) For they were monstrously comical, like toads of vast size emerging from the primeval slime in the twilight of the world’s dawn.

The skipper of one of them introduced me to them.

“I felt awfully bucked,” said the young officer (who is about five feet high), “when my beauty ate up her first house. But I was sorry for the house, which was quite a good one.”

“And how about trees?” I asked.

“They simply love trees,” he answered.

When our soldiers first saw these strange creatures lolloping along the roads and over old battlefields, taking trenches on the way, they shouted and cheered wildly, and laughed for a day afterwards. And yesterday the troops got out of their trenches laughing and shouting and cheering again because the Tanks had gone on ahead, and were scaring the Germans dreadfully, while they moved over the enemy’s trenches and poured out fire on every side. As I shall write later, these motor monsters had strange adventures and did very good work, justifying their amazing existence.

4

For several days before the great blow was to be made, and while there was heavy fighting in progress at most parts of the line—the capture of Guillemont by English and Irish troops, the splendid rush of the Irish through Ginchy—there was a steady forward movement and concentration of all the men and machinery to strike at the Flers line.

Villages beyond the zone of fire where battalions had been resting and where there was the busy life of soldiers in their billeting areas suddenly became emptied of all this human interest.

The men had passed on—higher up the roads, and higher up where there was a struggling tide of all the traffic of war, with supply columns, mule-trains, guns, limber, ambulances, and troops from all parts of the Empire, surging, swirling, struggling slowly forward through narrow village streets, up long winding roads, across trampled and barren fields, through the ruins of villages destroyed a year or more ago, and out into the country of evil menace which is criss-crossed by old trenches and pitted with old shell-craters and strewn with the refuse of battles two months back in history.

Here a great army with all its material of war—incredibly vast and crowded—lay waiting for the hour when it should be hurled to the great hammer-stroke.

They were masses of men who were there the night before the battle hidden in the darkness of the earth, not revealed even by the white moonlight except in huddled crowds and camps, but as I passed them again a few hours before the dawn I thought of the individual and not of the mass, all the separate hopes and pulse-beats of these men who were going to do a big thing if luck should favour us.

And out of the darkness I thought I heard the sound of laughter rising at the thought of the monstrous “hush-hush.” Before the dawn the moon was high and clear in a sky that had hardly any clouds. It shone down upon the fields and roads so that the plaster walls of French cottages were very white under the black roofs, and rows of tents were like little hillocks of snow in the harvest-fields.

As I looked up a shooting star flashed across the sky, and I thought of the old legend of a passing life, and wondered why to-night all the stars were not falling.

Presently dawn came, and some low-lying clouds were touched with a warm glow which deepened and spread until they were all crimson. It was a red dawn.

“The promise of victory like the sun of Austerlitz,” said an officer.

Before six o’clock, summer-time, all our guns were firing steadily, and all the sky, very pale and shimmering in the first twilight of the day, was filled with the flashes of guns and shell-bursts. Heavy howitzers were eating up shells.

5

I went to the right of the line, hoping to see the infantry attack to the left of Leuze Wood, as I had watched the battle here a week or two ago, and here one of the motor monsters was coming across the ground. But as the sun rose higher it drew the moisture out of all these shell-craters and trenches, and a dense white mist blotted out the ridge for an hour or more. French troops who join our line here came across country. British soldiers were moving forward on the left, silently, with the mist about them.

Overhead shells went rushing—heavy shells that travelled with the noise of trains. Forward batteries were firing rapidly and increasingly, and then sharp staccato knocking was clear above the heavy crashes of giant crumps, compared by a whimsical mind in this war with “an immortal plumber laying down his tools.”

Machine-gun fire rapped out in fierce spasms, and the German “Archies” were throwing up shells which burst all about the planes of our airmen, who came like a flock of birds over the battlefields, flying low above the mists.

They did wonderful things yesterday, those British air-pilots, risking their lives audaciously in single combats with hostile airmen, in encounters against great odds, in bombing enemy headquarters and railway stations and kite balloons, and troops, and registering or observing all day long for our artillery. They were out to destroy the enemy’s last means of observation, and they began the success of the battle by gaining the absolute mastery of the air.

Thirteen German aeroplanes (since reported by Sir Douglas Haig to be fifteen) were brought down, and their flying men dared not come across our lines to risk more losses.

On our side it was fighting “all in.” There was nothing of a killing character within our reach and knowledge which we did not use, and we turned the enemy’s own worst weapons against himself.

Every material of war made by the home workers in our factories by months of toil was called in.

The men went in with the resolve to break through the enemy’s third line without counting the cost, to smash down any opposition they might meet, and to go forward and far until they could get the enemy on the run.

A body of Scots went up to the battle-lines to the tune of “Stop your tickling, Jock,” but there was a grim meaning in the music, and it was no love-song.

English soldiers had been practising bayonet exercise harder than usual, and with a personal interest beyond the discipline. “It’s time to finish old Fritz,” was the shout of one soldier to another. “We want to go home for Christmas!”

The men fought yesterday fiercely and ruthlessly. They want to get on to the heels of the enemy, and there were moments yesterday when they saw many pairs of heels.

6

The area of our attack extended on the left from the ground north of Pozières to the line recently won to the north of Ginchy on the right, and its purpose was, as I have said, to break through the third German line below Courcelette, Martinpuich, and Lesboeuf, a distance of about six miles. Time of attack was shortly after six o’clock yesterday morning, and along all the line the troops were awaiting the moment to rise, after our artillery had completed its first barrage.

On the left in front of Courcelette there was hard and unexpected fighting. As we now know the enemy had prepared an attack against us, and had massed troops in considerable force in his front and reserve lines. He sent out advanced patrols and bombing parties, while our men were waiting to go over, and immediately there was a fierce encounter.

One young brown-eyed fellow told me his own experience, and it was like many others.

“The sergeant in my bay,” he said, “suddenly called out that he had seen a signal light go up from another point of the trenches giving a warning of attack. ‘We shall have the whole lot on us,’ he shouted. ‘Look out for yourselves, lads.’”

The enemy came over in a rush. Many fell before the rifle fire of our men, but others managed to jump into portions of trench, and bombed their way up several of the bays.

Machine-guns were turned on to them, and there were not many left alive. But before the fight had ended a new one began, for our jumping-off time had come, and the assaulting troops rose as one man, and taking no notice of what had happened swept across their own trenches and the Germans who were in them, and went straight across country towards Courcelette.

They came up immediately against difficult ground and fierce machine-gun fire. South-east of Courcelette, beyond the shell-craters and bits of broken trench which the men had carried easily enough, sweeping the Germans down before them, stood the ruins of a sugar factory, which the enemy had made into a redoubt, with machine-gun emplacements.

It was one of those deadly places which have cost so many lives among our men in other parts of the battle ground now in our hands.

7

But we had a new engine of war to destroy the place. Over our own trenches in the twilight of the dawn one of those motor-monsters had lurched up, and now it came crawling forward to the rescue, cheered by the assaulting troops, who called out words of encouragement to it and laughed, so that some men were laughing even when bullets caught them in the throat.

“Crême de Menthe” was the name of this particular creature, and it waddled forward right over the old German trenches, and went forward very steadily towards the sugar factory.

There was a second of silence from the enemy there. Then, suddenly, their machine-gun fire burst out in nervous spasms and splashed the sides of “Crême de Menthe.”

But the Tank did not mind. The bullets fell from its sides, harmlessly. It advanced upon a broken wall, leaned up against it heavily until it fell with a crash of bricks, and then rose on to the bricks and passed over them, and walked straight into the midst of the factory ruins.

From its sides came flashes of fire and a hose of bullets, and then it trampled around over machine emplacements, “having a grand time,” as one of the men said with enthusiasm.

It crushed the machine-guns under its heavy ribs, and killed machine-gun teams with a deadly fire. The infantry followed in and took the place after this good help, and then advanced again round the flanks of the monster.

In spite of the Tank, which did such grand work, the assault on Courcelette was hard and costly. Again and again the men came under machine-gun fire and rifle fire, for the Germans had dug new trenches, called the Fabeckgraben and Zollerngraben, which had not been wiped out by our artillery, and they fought with great courage and desperation.

Seventy men who advanced first on a part of these lines were swept down. Seventy others who went forward to fill their places fell also to a man. But their comrades were not disheartened, and at last carried the position in a great wave of assault.

Then they went on to the village. It was like all these villages in German hands, tunnelled with a nest of dug-outs, and a stronghold hard to take. The British troops entered it from the eastern side, fought yard by yard, stubbornly resolved to have it.

The Tank came along and ploughed about, searching for German machine-guns, thrusting over bits of wall, nosing here and there, and sitting on heaps of ruin while it fired down the streets. By 6.30 last evening the village was taken.

The British took 400 prisoners, and when they were brought down to Pozières last night they passed old Crême de Menthe, who was going home, and held up their hands crying “Gott in Himmel!” and asked how they could fight against such monstrous things.

The taking of Courcelette was a great achievement skilfully planned and carried out with stern and high courage by splendid men, and one monster.

8

On the right of these troops there was a great assault upon Martinpuich and High Wood. Here, also, in High Wood, the Germans had been ready for an attack, and, being forestalled in that, they made a strong counter-attack which for a time had some success, driving our men back to the southern edge of the wood.

Our troops had been heavily shelled beforehand, and they found the enemy in much stronger force than they had expected in that wood of bitter memory. But these men of ours—I have met many of them before a year ago—fought very gamely.

Some among them were utterly without experience of the Somme kind of fighting and wilted a little before its ferocity of fire, but the older men, the “veterans” of a year’s service or more, cheered them up, kept them steady, and led them on.

They counter-attacked the counter-attack and regained their old line, and then to their great joy saw the Tanks advancing through High Wood and on each side of it.

“It was like a fairy tale!” said a Cockney boy. “I can’t help laughing every time I think of it.”

He laughed then, though he had a broken arm and was covered in blood.

“They broke down trees as if they were matchsticks, and went over barricades like elephants. The Boches were thoroughly scared. They came running out of shell-holes and trenches, shouting like mad things.”

“Some of them attacked the Tanks and tried to bomb them, but it wasn’t a bit of good. O Crikey, it was a rare treat to see! The biggest joke that ever was! They just stamped down the German dug-out as one might a whops nest.”

On the left of High Wood was a very fine body of troops who had no trenches to lie in but just lay out in shell-craters under a constant fire of “whizz-bangs,” that is to say, field-guns firing at short range, which was extremely hard to endure.

“It was cruel,” said one of these men, “but we went forward all right when the time came over the bodies of comrades who were lying in pools of blood, and afterwards the enemy had to pay.”

9

They were co-operating with some troops on their left, who went straight for Martinpuich, that village into which I stared a week or two ago after a long walk to our front line on the crest of the ridge beyond Bazentin, looking at the Promised Land.

These men were superb and went across No Man’s Land for nearly 1000 yards in six minutes, racing. They made short work with the Germans who tried to snipe them from the shell-craters, and only came to a check on the outskirts of Martinpuich, where they were received with a blast of machine-gun fire.

It was then the turn of the Tanks.

Before the dawn two of them had come up out of the darkness and lumbered over our front line trenches looking towards the enemy as though hungry for breakfast. Afterwards they came across No Man’s Land like enormous toads with pains in their stomachs, and nosed at Martinpuich before testing the strength of its broken barns and bricks.

The men cheered them wildly, waving their helmets and dancing round them. One company needed cheering up, for they had lost two of their officers the night before in a patrol adventure, and it was the sergeants who led them over.

Twenty minutes afterwards the first waves were inside the first trench of Martinpuich and in advance of them waddled a monster.

The men were held up for some time by the same machine-gun fire which has killed so many of our men, but the monsters went on alone, and had astounding adventures.

They went straight through the shells of broken barns and houses, straddled on top of German dug-outs, and fired enfilading shots down German trenches.

From one dug-out came a German colonel with a white, frightened face, who held his hands very high in front of the Tank, shouting, “Kamerad! Kamerad!”

“Well, come inside then,” said a voice in the body of the beast, and a human hand came forth from a hole opening suddenly and grabbed the German officer.

For the rest of the day the Tank led that unfortunate man about on the strangest journey the world has ever seen.

Another Tank was confronted with one hundred Germans, who shouted “Mercy! Mercy!” and at the head of this procession led them back as prisoners to our lines. Yet another Tank went off to the right of Martinpuich, and was so fresh and high-spirited that it went far into the enemy’s lines, as though on the way to Berlin.

The men were not so fortunate as the monsters, not being proof against machine-gun bullets. The enemy concentrated a very heavy fire upon them, and many fell. One boy—a fine, stout-hearted lad who had a keen and spirited look in spite of dreadful experience—told me a tale that Edgar Allan Poe might have written if he had lived to see things worse than anything in his morbid imaginings—one of our common tales.

A German crump killed a lance-corporal by his side and buried them both completely.

“It was just my steel hat that kept the earth from my face,” said the boy, “and gave me a little handful of air to breathe. It was in a wee trench we had dug to get some cover. But now I was covered too much.”

“It seemed like an hour I was there, but perhaps no more than half that time. I tried to shout, but could not. A man walked over my head, but did not know I was there.”

“Presently they saw the lance-corporal’s leg sticking out, and started to pull him. I got my hand out, and waggled it, and they started digging for me. It was just time. The veins were starting out of my head, and I was nearly gone.”

It was late in the evening before the whole of Martinpuich was taken after fierce fighting, and it was the crowning triumph of a successful day.

10

The troops on the left side of the line did amazingly well, and were handled well. They took forty German officers and 1430 other ranks. Against them was the 2nd Bavarian Corps, whom many of our men had met before at Kemmel and the Hohenzollern and Ypres, glad now to pay off old scores against them.

On the right of the troops at Martinpuich the attack was swinging up to Flers across a wide stretch of difficult and perilous ground strongly defended.

The enemy was flinging over storms of shrapnel and high explosives, and many of our men fell, but the wounded shouted on the others, if they were not too badly hit, and the others went forward grimly and steadily.

These soldiers of ours were superb in courage and stoic endurance, and pressed forward steadily in broken waves. The first news of success came through from an airman’s wireless, which said:

“A Tank is walking up the High Street of Flers with the British Army cheering behind.”

It was an actual fact. One of the motor-monsters was there, enjoying itself thoroughly, and keeping down the heads of the enemy.

It hung out a big piece of paper, on which were the words:

“GREAT HUN DEFEAT. SPECIAL!”

The aeroplane flew low over its carcass, machine-gunning the scared Germans, who fled before the monstrous apparition. Later in the day it seemed to have been in need of a rest before coming home, and two humans got out of its inside and walked back to our lines.

But, by that time, Flers and many prisoners were in our hands, and our troops had gone beyond to further fields.

11

On the extreme right of our line of attack the fighting was hardest and fiercest of all, and is still very confused and uncertain to the north of Ginchy and in the direction of Guedecourt. In this direction the enemy fought with fine courage. Machine-gun fire swept our men from the direction of Morval and Combles, and the shell-fire was frightful in its violence.

Nevertheless, the first rush forward was magnificent on the part of the troops. They were the Guards.

“Lots of our men dropped,” said one of them, “but we didn’t look round or bother about anything or see anything of what was going on around us. We had orders to push on, and we pushed.”

The enemy resisted stoutly along his first line. They kept up a severe rifle fire and machine-gun fire until our men were right on them, and then fought bayonet to bayonet.

Large numbers of them were killed, and the troops swept through to the second line of trenches and took that.

A third wave passed through them to the third German trench, but before they reached this goal the German soldiers came out with their hands up and surrendered. Our men went on and on.

“The Boches ran like rabbits before us,” said several of them. They went too far, these soldiers, in their eagerness. One of the colonels stood up on a hillock blowing a hunting horn to fetch them back, but they did not hear, and went on still further, unsupported by troops on their right.

The officers waved on the men with their revolvers, and many fell leading their companies. It was one of the greatest charges in history, but drove out too far into the “blue” without sufficient co-operation, with troops held up lower down by strong points and machine-guns. What the situation is there to-night I do not yet know, except that our men were fighting on the outskirts of Guedecourt.

12

I have no time to tell of all the great drama I have seen—the long trails of the walking wounded, marvellously brave, wonderfully full of spirits, the long columns of German prisoners tramping back from the battlefields, dejected and miserable, and other great pictures of war not yet to be written.

The German prisoners were utterly dismayed—bewildered beyond words. Some of the officers tried to shrug it off as “a stroke of luck,” but others admitted that we had surprised them by a great and brilliant stroke.

One of them with whom I spoke was a young artillery officer who had fought against us at Ypres in 1914, and afterwards against the Russians.

“The Somme is the worst of all for us,” he said. “It is fearful.”

Several German officers were appalling figures, in masks of horror, their faces as black as negroes. They had been in a dug-out blown up by one of our bombs, and it was full of Very lights, which flamed about them, and burnt them black.

It was a black day for Germany, and the hardest blow that has been struck at her heart and pride by British troops. For us the glory of the day is in the splendour of our men.

XXX

FIGHTING BEYOND FLERS

1

SEPTEMBER 17

The enemy has made desperate attempts to organise counter-attacks to thrust back our lines from the ground gained by us since Friday morning. They have failed. We hold all the ground captured in the general assault, and yesterday and to-day our troops have gone further forward winning new and important positions.

Mouquet Farm, for which the Australians fought with a most stubborn courage, entering the place several times with their patrols, was taken last night by a swift and successful assault. Left of that, below Thiépval, and to the east of that stronghold, attacks beginning last Thursday on a fortified position known as the “Wunderwerk” (a curious and villainous system of trenches and dug-outs) have been a brilliant success, and have extended our gain by a mile of frontage along the Danube trench.

We have a strong flank line securing Courcelette and have pushed out beyond Martinpuich towards Eaucourt l’Abbaye, and beyond Flers towards Guedecourt. The day has not been so sensational as Friday, but solid progress has been made, and the enemy is kept nervous.

He has been hurrying up reserves from Le Sars and Miraumont and places far back behind his lines. They were reported to be moving up yesterday by motor transport, and our long-range guns “dealt with them,” to use the grim phrase of one of our artillery officers.

The enemy’s losses are certainly very frightful. His dead lie solid in certain parts of the battle front. There are fields of horror here round High Wood and above Delville Wood, and not all the shells which I saw slashing those rows of tree stumps to-day will give the enemy back those men who are being buried by his high explosives.

The whole of the great stretch of battlefield along the high ridge to Delville Wood and Ginchy is one great graveyard, and looking across it to-day, as I stood among shell-craters and old German trenches and the litter of a wide destruction, this great desolate horror was an evil panorama which chilled one’s spirit.

The enemy was flinging over heavy crumps and black shrapnel, but his shooting seemed to me wild and without definite targets. The reason of it was clear. In taking the high ridge we have the observation which was once his, and it is our artillery which now has the supreme advantage.

2

The bombardment of September 15 was the most remarkable achievement ever done by British artillery, and not surpassed I should say in any army. Every detail of it was planned beforehand.

Every “heavy” had its special objective and its own time-table working exactly with the infantry, concentrating upon the enemy’s trenches and strong points, barraging his lines of communication, following the tracks of those motor monsters whose amazing adventures I described in my last despatch, and co-operating with the air service to reach out to distant targets.

The field batteries were marvellously audacious in taking up new positions, and the F.O.O.’s (the forward observing officers) were gallant in getting up to the high ground as soon as our infantry had taken it and registering their batteries from these new view-points.

I heard to-day the whole artillery scheme of one corps and the scientific precision with which the enemy’s defences were destroyed made me shiver as in the presence of a high intelligence distributing death on a great scale, by means of minute calculations of time and space, which, indeed, is exactly the truth.

The enemy’s artillery is still very strong, and it would be nonsense to depreciate his prodigious gun-power. But some at least of his batteries are in a perilous position now that we are able to observe them, and from my own observation of his shell-fire to-day it seems to me that he is shifting them further back.

He had not shifted them when our attack began on Friday morning last (although our counter-battery work was making it extremely hot for him), and it is remarkable that within two minutes of our attack he concentrated a particularly fierce fire on High Wood, where our men were advancing.

It is possible that his “sausage” balloons had observed the approach of the Tanks, and had seen them behind our trenches, like ichthyosauri waiting for their morning meal. But as I have previously hinted, there is sound evidence for the belief that he had prepared a great counter-attack along a wide front at the very time when our own was launched.

This accounts for the great mass of men killed in his lines and for the large number of prisoners who fell into our hands.

3

The capture of Mouquet Farm last night was made by a dash across a short strip of No Man’s Land. The garrison there retreated into a tunnelled dug-out, which had at least two entrances, and showed no willingness to surrender, maintaining rifle fire from loop-holes after they were surrounded.

The southern entrance to this underground stronghold was blown in by high explosives, while men kept guard of the other entry, waiting for any Germans who might come up to surrender.

This capture of Mouquet Farm (a stick or two above a heap of broken brickwork, as I saw it some weeks ago) has made the position of Thiépval still more closely gripped—the garrison there holds out stubbornly in its tunnelled corridors—and helped forward the assault upon the Danube Trench launched with absolute success.

This carried further the operation begun last Thursday, when our troops made one of those brilliant assaults upon the intricate system of earthworks to the south of Thiépval, which I watched a few weeks ago, when the Wiltshires and the Gloucesters did so well.

On the left, running southwards down the ridge, is an extraordinary V-shaped wedge with an open end. This position was not attacked, but our men drove straight up to the left of it, upon the “Wonder-work,” which was one of those nests of dug-outs upon which the Germans lavished all their skill in digging and pummelling and strengthening and furnishing in what soldiers call “the days of peace”—the old days of ordinary trench-warfare.

It was no longer a “Wonder-work” when our men rushed upon it. A whirlwind bombardment which had preceded them, and heavy shell-fire for weeks past had broken the concrete emplacements and flung up the earth with deep shell-pits, so that it was merely a part of the general chaos existing on these battlefields.

Five German officers and 116 men were still alive there, and surrendered instantly. “You were on us like the wind,” said one of these officers afterwards. “We had no time to defend ourselves.” Other men fled from neighbouring shell-craters, but ran straight into our curtain fire and fell.

Our lads chased some of them as they ran, but halted this side of our bursting shells, and came back “fearfully bucked,” to use their own phrase, because they had put the enemy to flight and mastered him so utterly.

4

Yesterday counter-attacks were attempted by the 5th Reserve Regiment of Guards, but they were not carried through with resolution. The first wave of men came a hundred yards or so towards our men, then hesitated, flung their bombs, which fell ludicrously short, and ran back.

On the left they were bolder and brave, and a very long and stubborn fight took place with bombs, ending in the complete victory of our men after they had flung 1,500 hand-grenades.

North-east of Flers other counter-attacks were attempted yesterday, but our troops who were advancing towards Guedecourt went right through them and over them with irresistible spirit, checked only by concealed machine-guns in a harvest field on their wing.

In Bouleaux Wood, to the north of Leuze Wood, there has been fierce hand-to-hand fighting, and in the centre of it is an unfortunate Tank—one of the few casualties among the armoured monsters—which lies with its nose in the earth, forming a barricade between the opposing bombers.

The general situation along our attacking front leaves the initiative in our hands and reveals the temporary demoralisation of the enemy’s troops and command.

One cannot say more than that. The enemy has had a hard blow, but he has reserves of strength which are controlled by cool brains behind his lines.

There is still much fighting to be done before Germany’s weakness reaches the breaking point, but the losses we have inflicted upon her during the last three days are so terrible that she cannot hide her wounds.

XXXI

MONSTERS AND MEN

1

SEPTEMBER 18

In all the accounts of the fighting since Friday the story of the Tanks—those weird and wonderful armoured monsters—runs like a humorous thread. Full of humour and fantasy, because of their shape and qualities, they are also filled with very gallant men, to whom great honour is due. The skippers and crews of these land-ships, as they are called, had to go out alone in many cases in advance of the infantry and upon hazardous chances, which each one of them knew were weighted with the risk, almost the certainty—for it was a new, untried experiment—of death. They had astounding adventures and a large measure of success, and it was due not to any kind of luck, but to great skill and great courage.

I have already told the first stories of their actions. To-day I obtained a full narrative of their achievements, and it is one of the most dramatic and gallant records in the history of this war.

Two of them who set out to attack the line from Combles to Morval made a rendezvous at Wedge Wood, and took up their position at night. One of them set off and ambled slowly until it came within 400 yards north-west of Combles, far in advance of the infantry. Here it sat for five hours, fighting the enemy alone, and shooting down German bombing parties, until it was severely damaged.

The other Tank in the neighbourhood of Bouleaux Wood reached the enemy’s trenches near Morval, and, finding that it had left the infantry behind, went back to inquire for them. They were held up by German bombers in a trench, so the Tank came to the rescue, bucked over the trench, and crushed the bombers into the earth before backing into a deep shell-crater and toppling over. Here for an hour and a half it formed a barricade between British and German bombers, and the crew got out and tried to hoist it out of the shell-hole under heavy fire. One of the men picked up a live bomb flung by the enemy, and tried to hurl it to a safe distance, away from his comrades, but was blown to bits. Finally the “skipper,” with his surviving men, came back to our lines, leaving the derelict monster still used as a barricade.

North of Ginchy telegraph one of the Tanks attacked a machine-gun emplacement and killed many of the men. East of Delville Wood another advanced upon a German trench called Laager Lane, and so frightened the enemy that about a hundred of them came out under white flags and surrendered to it, following the monster back to our lines.

The attack on Hop Alley, by Delville Wood, was led by a Tank which attacked a number of bombers and put them to flight, so that the trench was cleared for the infantry. Afterwards, under a heavy German barrage, it could advance no further, and the skipper and his crew, after doing this fine work, came out of their monster and, with splendid heroism, helped our wounded for three hours.

The officer who did what the soldiers call the great “stunt” in Flers told me his story to-day, and I found him to be as modest a fellow as any naval officer on a light cruiser, and of the same fine type. He went into Flers before the infantry and followed by them, cheering in high spirits, and knocked out a machine-gun which began to play on him. The town was not much damaged by shell-fire, so that the Tank could walk about real streets, and the garrison, which was hiding about in dug-outs, surrendered in small, scared groups. Then the other Tanks came into Flers, and together they lolloped around the town in a free and easy manner before going further afield.

The Tank which went through High Wood did great execution over the German trenches, and another wandered around shell-craters “killing” German machine-guns. The casualties were slight considering the great success of the experiment, and on all sides among our soldiers there is nothing but praise of the gallant men who led them. They are still going strong.

To-day one of the monsters—it was old “Cordon Rouge”—came waddling over shell-craters, climbing over broken trenches, and fetched up outside the door of a brigadier’s dug-out. From the inside of the beast came a very cool and grave young man, who saluted in a naval way, and said, “I await your orders, sir, for going into action.”

“And I’m very glad you didn’t bring your monster down into my dug-out,” said the brigadier. “But it’s very kind of you to call, and no doubt we shall want you shortly.”

2

I have been to-day, and for four days, among the men who have broken the Flers line and given the enemy the hardest blows he has ever suffered on this front. Sir Douglas Haig has named them this afternoon in his great bulletin, paying a tribute to their valour in a broad, general way, without letting the enemy know too much about the battalions facing him. They were all splendid. For the big battle on Friday was a hard one, and not a “walk over,” so that our men were put to the supreme test of courage by most damnable shell-fire and fierce concentrated barrages by which the enemy’s gunners at long range endeavoured to support their lost and suffering infantry.

What touched me most, perhaps, though Heaven knows the experiences of all our soldiers made one awe-struck, was the way in which our newest and youngest men went through with their business. There were some of them Derby recruits, who had never yet seen what shell-fire means in the Somme battle. Older men among them, who knew, were sorry for them, wondered how they would “stick it,” and said, with a view to encouragement, “Cheer up, you’ll soon be dead.” They did not hang back, these new fellows. The rawest recruits among them strained forward with the rest, floundered over the shell-holes like the others, leapt into the German trenches, like men of old fighting spirit.

3

The London men did gloriously and had one of the hardest points of the attack, and came under some of the heaviest storms of fire. These young Civil servants and men of the London suburbs, who used to go to City offices by early morning trains—do you remember how they spoke once of “London pride”?—fought sternly and endured with stoicism, and had a laugh left in them after the battle when they forgot the frightfulness of it all and remembered the fantastic adventures of the Tanks which waddled into the German lines, knocking down tree-stumps, climbing over heaps of ruin, and “putting the wind up” in the enemy’s ranks. “It was a fair treat!” said one of them. “Every time I think of it I can’t help laughing!” And yet it was no joke, after all, but very grim and deadly work.

There was hardly a county of England which did not have its sons in this battle, and all those English regiments of the north and the south were so good, so fine, so full of spirit, that it made one wonder at the stock that has bred these men, giving to them out of the strain of England some quality of blood that has withstood all the weakening influences of factory life and city life. And yet, having written that, I see it is foolishness. For men of all the Empire were here, and it was the spirit of the whole race that rose at dawn out of the trenches and shell-craters and went forward into the furnace fires.

4

About the Scottish troops I can say no more than I have said a hundred times, loving all those Lowlanders and Highlanders “this side idolatry.”

I was with some of their officers to-day again, and heard stories of their men who took one of the German strongholds after a serpentine plan of attack difficult to perform because in attacking men will go straight, and coming under shell-fire which would have broken the spirit of weaker men. But they went on in waves over the German trenches and into the village where some hundreds of men surrendered to them, coming up out of the dug-outs as soon as the Scots were about their hiding-places.

The German soldiers had been thoroughly frightened by the Tank, which had come nosing in before the infantry, and many of them huddled piteously under its flanks in order to escape from its rapid fire. Sixty men came out of one dug-out and surrendered in this way. Afterwards the Scots pushed on beyond the stronghold and established posts and dug cover for themselves against the enemy’s gun-fire, which threw an enormous number of high explosives into their old place of defence, which was stacked with timber for dug-outs and other stores of war material.

5

The Canadians gained great glory on Friday and Saturday. After their long and hard experiences in the salient they came down to the Somme battlefield determined to “get their own back,” and do great adventures. Their attack was finely organised, and when all the difficulties are known will be put down to their credit as a really great military achievement. Among them is a body of French Canadians, dark-eyed fellows whom it is strange to meet about the villages of France speaking volubly with the peasants in their own tongue, a little old-fashioned, as it was once spoken in the days of Louis XIV, when Canada was one of the brightest rays in the glory of the Sun-King. These fellows, close in likeness to the provincial Frenchman, though perhaps more dour and reserved, went away like wolves a-hunting, and raced forward to a German stronghold which they had asked leave to take.

They were swept by machine-gun fire and checked by a stubborn defence on the part of the enemy, but with the help of the two Tanks, called “Crême de Menthe” and “Cordon Rouge,” who sat on the enemy’s machine-gun emplacements and knocked out his machine-gun crews, the French Canadians carried the stronghold and captured hundreds of prisoners.

Later I hope to write the full story of the Canadian victory which will thrill through all the towns and fields of the great Dominion like an heroic song, for these men from overseas were very careless of death so that they might win.

6

Then there were the New Zealanders, those clean-cut, handsome fellows in the felt hats with a bit of red ribbon round the brim, which I looked for down village streets and in French harvest fields before they went into battle. Australia has set a great example to them, being first in the fighting round Pozières, where they fought as wonderfully as in the Dardanelles. They were not less gallant in the great charge they made at dawn on Friday, going forward very far to a distant place across No Man’s Land, and across German trenches, under heavy fire, and out “into the blue” in pursuit of retreating men.

7

Sir Douglas Haig mentions last of all the Guards, but not because they were least in valour. They fought as the Guards always fight, with superb discipline, and with a tradition, that is sacred to them. I saw them before they went into battle, and had a meal in the mess of the Irish Guards, and saw them marching up to take their line in the battlefields.

They are not the old Guards who fought at Ypres and in many bloody battles when we were hard pressed, and afterwards at Loos, when they had some fearful hours. Many of those brave men lie under the soil of France, and new men have taken their place. But the tradition stays, and the physical standard of the men has not been lowered by a hair’s breadth, and their discipline is still upon the same high and hard level. Every one knew they would put up a great fight, and they did.

They had a very difficult part of the line, and had to pass machine-guns which swept upon their ranks in enfilade fire, and had to advance over ground covered by whirlwind fire of high explosives. But they gained their way forward in a series of charges which went straight through three lines of German trenches, and captured large numbers of prisoners after heavy fighting, and held on to their ground against strong counter-attacks. The tradition of the Guards has been upheld, and a new tradition has been given to them.

I must put into a line some late important news of the day, which is the great casualties inflicted upon the enemy in the neighbourhood of Guedecourt. A body of the enemy’s infantry was observed to be retreating through the mist, and they were caught by some of our advanced patrols, who cut them to pieces with machine-gun fire. Elsewhere the enemy is surrendering in small batches, unable to stand the fearful slaughter inflicted upon them by our guns.

8

SEPTEMBER 19

Some of the most noble fighting qualities in the great battle of Friday last were shown by the troops who were responsible for the centre of the attack directed against Flers and the country immediately to the right of that village. Those who were given the task of assaulting Flers itself were mostly recruited from the London area.

They had not seen much fighting before going into the great fire of the Somme battle. Their General, who had raised and trained them, was sure of them, and had taught each man the task expected of him on this great day, so that whatever might befall their officers, the men should not be mere sheep without a sense of guidance or direction.