Chapter XII: Part 12

When they formed up in line to the north of Delville Wood (with awkward bits of German trench thrust down upon their right flank), they had three lines in front of them over a distance of about 2,500 yards barring their way to Flers. It was a long way and a hard way to go, but they leapt forward in solid waves of keen and eager men following a short and violent barrage from our heavy guns.

In a few minutes from the start the first two waves dropped into the German switch line running diagonally from the real Flers line. They found it choked with German dead, killed by our gun-fire, and among them only a poor remnant of living men. The first two waves stayed in the trench to hold it. The others swept on, smashed through the Flers line, and forged their way over shell-craters under machine-gun and shrapnel fire, to the outskirts of Flers, which they reached between nine and ten in the morning.

Some London men were held up by barbed wire protecting a hidden trench which had not been previously observed, and a call was made for one of the Tanks which had come rolling up behind. It crawled forward, walking over the shell-craters, and smashed the whole length of barbed wire in front, firing rapidly upon the enemy’s bombers in the trench and putting them out of action. This enabled the whole line to advance into Flers village at the tail of another Tank now famous for its adventures in Flers, which I have already narrated.

The victorious troops found but little opposition in the village. Curiously enough, it was not strongly defended or fortified. There were few of the tunnels and dug-outs which make many of these places hard to capture, and the enemy was utterly demoralised by the motor monster which appeared as a bad dream before them. The enemy flung a heavy barrage, but our men had few casualties.

9

An attempt was made to reach Guedecourt, and, as I have already told, one of our Tanks reached the outskirts of that new objective. The infantry attack failed owing to massed machine-gun fire, and the men fell back to a new line of trenches hastily dug by the enemy before their defeat, which now gave us useful cover. This was 2,700 yards from the starting point at dawn, and was almost a record as a continuous advance.

The enemy rallied and made two counter-attacks, one at three o’clock in the afternoon, the other between four and five. They were tragic attempts. Some of our machine-gunners lay in waiting for them and mowed down these rows of men as they came bravely forward. It was such a sight as I watched at Falfemont Farm when solid bars of tall men crumbled and fell before a scythe of bullets.

At 6.30 on the following evening our troops made another attempt to reach Guedecourt in co-operation with the men on their right, but they were unable to get the whole distance in spite of a most heroic assault after two days of heavy fighting.

The force attacking on the right of Flers on Friday morning had similar experiences and more difficulties. They are men who know all there is to know about the Ypres salient, where I met them first nearly a year ago. They are men who have old scores to wipe off against the enemy in the way of poison gas and flame jets, and they went very fiercely into the battle.

To start with, they had to clear out a place known as Mystery Corner, to the right of Delville Wood, where they captured fifty-one prisoners, and afterwards a trench a little to the north of that, thrust down as a wedge between their left flank and the right of the troops who had started out for Flers.

This second strong point was wiped out by the Tanks who came and sat down on it, and by a small body of north countrymen working with the Tanks. Their particular job was done, and they might have stayed there, but, seeing the long waves of their comrades streaming forward to the main attack, they could not hold back, but followed on, all through the fight keeping touch in a most orderly way with the men ahead of them, and doing, as they put it, “odd jobs,” such as knocking out machine-guns and killing snipers.

It was so with other men. Having done their allotted task they would not stand and hold, but streamed after the tide which went through and past them, determined to be in at the death.

In the attacks upon Guedecourt that day and on the evening of the next they had a hard bad time like the men on their left. They were under enfilade fire from machine-guns, which chattered hour after hour, never silent. “The air was stiff with bullets,” says one of the officers. Men finding their only cover in shell craters could not put their heads up, so close did the bullets slash the earth. And in other shell-craters not far away were many German riflemen picking off any man who appeared for a moment out of the tumbled earth.

It was a hellish neighbourhood, yet when the moment for the second attack came mixed companies of men from various regiments who had mingled in the inevitable confusion of such a place and time (it was now thirty-six hours since the dawn of Friday) rose out of their holes in the earth and formed up as on parade, and went forward in a fine gallant style.

It was impossible in the face of all those bullets about them, and they fell back to the original line of advance well to the north of Flers, which was good enough for that day after such heroic work. There was no Division in our armies who could have done better, nor who did better, on a great day when all did well.

10

And now I must tell a little more in detail the story of the Guards in this battle. It is hard to tell it, and not all can be told yet because of the enemy. The Guards had their full share of the fighting, and of the difficult ground, with strong forces against them. They knew that would be so before they went into battle, and yet they did not ask for better things, but awaited the hour of attack with strong, gallant hearts, quite sure of their courage, proud of their name, full of trust in their officers, eager to give a smashing blow at the enemy.

These splendid men, so tall and proper, so hard and fine, went away as one might imagine the old knights and yeomen of England at Agincourt. For the first time in the history of the Coldstreamers, three battalions of them charged in line, great solid waves of men, as fine a sight as the world could show. Behind them were the Grenadiers, and again behind these men, the Irish.

They had not gone more than 200 yards before they came under the enfilade fire of massed machine-guns in trenches not previously observed. The noise of this fire was so loud and savage that although hundreds of guns were firing, not a shot could be heard. It was just the stabbing, staccato hammering of the German maxims. Men fell, but the lines were not broken. Gaps were made in the ranks, but they closed up. The wounded did not call for help, but cheered on those who swept past and on, shouting, “Go on, Lily Whites!”—which is the old name for the Coldstreamers—“Get at ’em, Lily Whites!”

They went on at a hot pace with their bayonets lowered. Out of the crumpled earth—all pits and holes and hillocks, torn up by great gun-fire—grey figures rose and fled. They were German soldiers terror-stricken by this rushing tide of men.

The Guards went on. Then they were checked by two lines of trenches, wired and defended by machine-guns and bombers. They came upon them quicker than they expected. Some of the officers were puzzled. Could these be the trenches marked out for attack—or other unknown trenches? Anyhow, they must be taken—and the Guards took them by frontal assault full in the face of continual blasts of machine-gun bullets.

There was hard and desperate fighting. The Germans defended themselves to the death. They bombed our men who attacked them with the bayonet, served their machine-guns until they were killed, and would only surrender when our men were on top of them. It was a very bloody hour or more. By that time the Irish Guards had joined the others. All the Guards were together, and together they passed the trenches, swinging left inevitably under the machine-gun fire which poured upon them from their right, but going steadily deeper into the enemy country until they were 2,000 yards from their starting place.

Then it was necessary to call a halt. Many officers and men had fallen. To go further would be absolute death. The troops on the right had been utterly held up. The Guards were “up in the air,” with an exposed flank, open to all the fire that was flung upon them from the enemy’s lines. The temptation to go farther was great. The German infantry was on the run. They were dragging their guns away. There was a great panic among the men who had been hiding in trenches. But the German machine gunners kept to their posts to safeguard a rout, and the Guards had gone far enough through their scourging bullets.

They decided very wisely to hold the line they had gained, and to dig in where they stood, and to make forward posts with strong points. They had killed a great number of Germans and taken 200 prisoners and fought grandly. So, now they halted and dug and took cover as best they could in shell-craters and broken ground, under fierce fire from the enemy’s guns.

The night was a dreadful one for the wounded, and for men who did their best for the wounded, trying to be deaf to agonising sounds. Many of them had hairbreadth escapes from death. One young officer in the Irish Guards lay in a shell-hole with two comrades, and then left it for a while to cheer up other men lying in surrounding craters. When he came back he found his two friends lying dead, blown to bits by a shell.

But in spite of all these bad hours, the Guards kept cool, kept their discipline, their courage and their spirit. The Germans launched counter-attacks against them, but were annihilated. The Guards held their ground, and gained the greatest honour for self-sacrificing courage which has ever given a special meaning to their name. They took the share which all of us knew they would take in the greatest of all our battles since the first day of July, and, with other regiments, struck a vital blow at the enemy’s line of defence.

XXXII

LONDON PRIDE

1

SEPTEMBER 20

Another dark, wet day, filled with grey mist, and rain-storms and mud. Up in the lines British soldiers and Germans lie near each other in shell-craters, waist high in water. The rain is slashing upon them, and it is cold. But though gunners cannot see, nor airmen fly, the bombardment goes on, and all day long there has been the dull crashing of heavy shells, on both sides deep and sullen boomings through the white fog of this foul day.

Last night and early in the morning the enemy attempted a counter-attack at different parts of the line. They attacked heavily here and there with strong bombing parties, who for a time forced a way into our new lines, at the corner of Courcelette and the north of Martinpuich and the ground further east.

Many of them were killed—the bad weather does not stop this slaughter—and they were driven out and back again by men who, though cold in their shell-craters, kept their courage and flung themselves fiercely upon the German assaulting troops, in sharp bombing fights, which left us with more ground—at least in one part of the line—than we had before. All of which shows that the enemy is hard pressed and tightly held, and that our men—infantry to infantry—not counting gun-fire, have the mastery of these German reserves, and a spirit that refuses to be beaten even by artillery.

I have written many thousands of words about this abominable war since the first shot was fired, and for fifteen months and more have been trying to picture as closely as possible the life of our soldiers in action, but I am conscious that all I have written has given but a vague, dim, far-off glimpse of the character, sufferings, and valour of our men.

How is it possible to show these things truly, to make my readers understand something of the truth when I cannot understand myself, but can only guess and grope at the qualities which make them do the things they do? Take our last great day of battle—September 15—there were troops of many different types engaged in its fighting—Canadians, New Zealanders, Scots, Irish, and English of many counties. One would expect to find differences among these men, to find some harder than others, or softer than others, battalions here and there who flinched before the storm of steel and those frightful shells which open great chasms in the earth. But on Friday the courage of all those men was of one quality, and a man would be a liar who said that one set of men were less brave than another.

2

To-day I went among the London men, and afterwards among some Highlanders, who have a special place in my heart. In blood, in upbringing, in physique, in temperament one could not find two bodies of men more unlike, yet they have been alike in splendid endurance under merciless fire last Friday and onwards. “I cannot understand how my boys stuck it out during the worst hours they had,” said a colonel of one of the City of London battalions. “They just had to sit in shell-craters under heavy crumps. Many men would not have gone through with it. But the London boys just stayed there, gamely. They are wonderful.”

The colonel himself was wonderful—this old Territorial soldier, nearly sixty years of age, with a white moustache and grizzled eyebrows that did not hide the bright and almost boyish light in his eyes. He used to be a dyspeptic and a “bundle of nerves,” so he told me, and did not think he could last three months of war. But now, at the beginning of the third year of war he led his battalion into action, went under some of the fiercest fire along the whole battle-line with them, and lay side by side with his “boys,” as he calls them, in a shell-hole which became filled with water by violent rain-storms. For three days and nights he lay there while the enemy was trying to shell our men to death by his monstrous five-point-nines.

There were London men with him and all around him in the same kind of holes—for there were no trenches here—and though even the sergeants were shaking with a kind of ague, not with cold, but after the nervous strain of enduring the incessant shock of high explosives, they “carried on,”—O splendid phrase!—and not a fellow played the coward, though all were very much afraid, as all men are in these frightful hours.

They had been born and bred in London. They had worn black coats and “toppers” in the City—all the officers among them—and the men had been in warehouses and offices and shops down Thames-side and away to Whitehall. They had played the gentle game of dominoes in luncheon hours over a glass of milk and a Bath bun. They had grown nasturtiums in suburban gardens, and their biggest adventure in life had been the summer manœuvres of the dear old “Terriers.” And now—they fought through German trenches and lay in shell-holes, and every nerve in their brains and bodies was ravaged by the tumult of shell-fire about them and by the wounded who lay with them. But these Londoners who fight on their nerves were no less staunch than men like the Scots and the North Country lads, who, as far as I can see, have no nerves at all.

3

There were some strange individual adventures in the midst of the general experience of rushing two lines of German trenches through a violent barrage and getting forward to open country, where they dug themselves in. Among ten machine-guns which they captured on their way up there was one handled by a German gunner who awaited his chance to sweep the ranks of the London lads. But he did not get it. An officer of the London regiment who was carrying a rifle “spotted” the man quickly and killed him with a straight shot before he had fired more than a few bullets. That rifle-shot saved the lives of many of our men.

In the second German trench there was a sharp fight, and one single combat between one of our officers—who happens to be a South African—and a great lusty German who was a much bigger man than ours. It was a bayonet duel as two mediæval knights might have fought in the old days with heavy swords.

Our officer was already wounded twice. He had a bullet through the shoulder, and a damaged jaw. But five times he pierced his enemy with the bayonet. It should have been enough, but the great German still fought. Both bayonets were dropped and the two men closed and wrestled with each other, trying to get a grip of the throat. The German wrestler, bloody as he was, seemed to keep all his brute strength, but he was laid out by a bullet in the neck from a sergeant of the Londoners who came to the rescue of the officer. Afterwards this easy-going gentleman—from South Africa—chatted with his colonel over the body of his man as quietly and calmly as though he were in his smoking-room at home, and paid no attention whatever to his wounds, refusing to go down to the doctor, but going forward again with his men.

Some of the men went too far in their eagerness, away into the “blue.” No word came back from them. No signal. Later one man trudged back, bringing two prisoners. “Where are the others?” he was asked. He pointed far away, and said “Over there.” He is the only man who has come back from that place of mystery.

4

Some of the London battalions did not suffer so heavily as might have been expected, from the hard task they had, and the wonderful way in which they fought. What loss they suffered was the price of extreme valour. The charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava has been put into song as one of the great heroic tales of history. Will any one make a song of the London men who fought forward through a hurricane of fire?

The stretcher-bearers of the London Territorials did their work nobly, and among them as a volunteer was one German who deserves a word of praise, by men with a sporting spirit, fair to their enemy. He had first been taken prisoner by an officer of ours, who was then hit by a piece of shell or a rifle bullet. He fell, and could not rise again, but his prisoner, who was an officer, too, picked him up and carried him across the battlefield to our dressing station, and then stood by for an escort to take him away.

The General commanding these London men spoke of them to-day with a thrill in his voice. He had been with them, and had reconnoitred their ground, and had seen their way of fighting. When I spoke to him he had been without sleep and rest for two days and nights. “No men could have done better,” he said. “No general could wish to command braver men or better men. Their discipline is splendid. There is never any crime among them. They behave always as gentlemen should behave, and they fight with fine hearts. These London boys of mine had one of the hardest tasks on Friday, and they carried it through with a most gallant spirit.”

5

Another day I must write of the Highlanders whom I met to-day—those Gay Gordons of whom I have written several times when I have found them in other parts of the battle-line. Some of them waved hands to me to-day and shouted cheerfully across a track of mud, and, seeing the faces under their bonnets, I was enormously glad to find these old friends of mine alive and well after many days of fighting. Squarer, tougher, harder men than the Londoners, they fought in their own style, gloriously, with all their comrades in kilts or trews who swept across the German lines, and then held their captured ground under infernal fire. One story they told me of the things they have seen is a grim little picture which is etched in my brain.

Two of them went down into a German dug-out and started back when they saw a man seated there at table. The table was laid for a meal, but the food was uneaten. It was a dead German officer who sat before them, as though asleep. The top of the dug-out had been knocked in by one of our shells, and something had fallen and killed him as he was beginning breakfast. The Gordons went into other dug-outs and found other dead bodies, but it was this sitting man that they remember most.

XXXIII

THE SPLENDID NEW ZEALANDERS

1

SEPTEMBER 23

It was inevitable that after the great battle of September 15 our line should have ragged edges and run up or down into small salients. This was due to the greater progress made by different bodies of troops; and to the way in which isolated groups of Germans held on very stubbornly to these stretches of ground not in the general line of our advance.

During the past forty-eight hours a good deal has been done to clear out these pockets, or wedges, and to straighten out the line from Courcelette eastwards.

This morning our troops did a useful bit of work in such a place between Courcelette and Martinpuich, knocking out a strong post and taking some prisoners, with whom were two officers. Elsewhere strong posts thrust out by us beyond the main trenches have been linked up, so that the line now runs in a reasonably even way from the north of Courcelette across the Bapaume Road, above Martinpuich, and so on to the north of Flers.

This linking-up and clearing-up work now done to a great extent, puts us in a stronger position of defence, to hold what we have gained, against any attempts made by the enemy in counter-attack.

He has made many attempts since September 15 to drive our troops out of the high ground, which is vital to his means of observation, and the failure of them has cost him a great price in life.

2

Among the most desperate thrusts, pressed with stubborn bravery by bodies of German soldiers, collected hastily and flung with but little plan or preliminary organisation against our lines, were those directed upon the New Zealanders, who repelled them after hard and long conflicts fought out for the most part with naked steel.

In all the fighting since July i there has not been anything more fierce or more bloody than these hand-to-hand struggles on the left of Flers, and the New Zealanders have gained a greater name for themselves (it was already a great name since Gallipoli) as soldiers who hate to give up what they have gained, who will hold on to ground with a grim obstinacy against heavy odds, and if they are ordered to retreat because of the military situation round them come back again with a stern resolve to “get the goods.”

That is not only my reading of the men, and I do not pretend to know them well, but is the summing-up of an officer, not from their own country, who has seen them fight during these last few days, and who spoke of them with a thrill of admiration in his voice, after watching the stoicism with which they endured great shell-fire, the spirit with which they attacked after great fatigues and hardships, and the rally of men, discouraged for a while by their loss of officers, which swept the Germans back into panic-stricken flight.

This struggle covers a week’s fighting since September 15, when at dawn the New Zealanders advanced in waves to a series of positions which would bring them up to the left of Flers if they had the luck to get as far. On their right were the troops whose capture of Flers village I have already described, and on their left other troops attacking High Wood and the ground north of it.

The men of New Zealand went forward with hardly a check, to the German switch trench 500 yards from the starting line. They were men of Auckland, Canterbury, Otago, and Wellington, and they put their trust in the bayonet and desired to get close to their enemy.

They had their desire. In the switch trench the Germans defended themselves to the last gasp, and, as far as I can make out, only four of them were left alive after that frightful encounter. It was a fight to the death on both sides, and the New Zealanders did not cross that ditch at full strength.

On the way up they lost under shrapnel and machine-gun fire. On the other side of the ditch their lines were thinner. But they were on the other side, and the ditch behind them was a grave upon which they turned their backs to get across the next stretch of ground to trenches 800 yards ahead.

The New Zealand Rifles covered this ground quickly, moving in open order, but keeping in touch with each other by fine discipline and an esprit de corps which is better than discipline.

3

That next system of trench work, two lines heavily wired and deeply dug, part of the famous Flers line, was a great obstacle. Our gun-fire, grand as it had been, had not laid all the wire low nor destroyed the trenches. A swish of machine-gun bullets showed that the enemy was alive and savage.

An infantry assault on such a line had to be paid for, sometimes by a great number of dead and wounded. But it was the day of the Tanks. Two of them had tried to keep pace with the New Zealand attack, but had lagged behind like short-winded creatures suffering from stitch—and no wonder, looking at the shell-craters and pits across which they had to bring their long bodies, crawling in and crawling out, with their tails above their heads and their heads above their tails.

But they arrived in time to attack the Flers line, and in a very deliberate and stolid way they sidled along the barbed wire, smashing it into the earth, before poking their big snouts over the German parapets, hauling themselves up, and firing from both flanks upon German machine-gun teams.

With this noteworthy help, which saved time and trouble and life, the New Zealanders took the double trenches of the Flers line, and again pushed on, another 700 yards, across a sunken road with steep banks and very deep dug-outs, where the enemy did not stay to meet them until they had established themselves on a line running westwards from the top of Flers village, now in the hands of our English lads.

One of the Tanks followed them, getting down the steep bank with its nose to earth, and lumbering up the other side like a huge elephant (without a trunk).

A German battery 1,500 yards away searched for it with shell-fire, but did not get within hitting distance of its armoured skin. Eventually it was the German battery that was knocked out by our guns.

However, this was a side-show, and the Tanks must not take all the glory away from the infantry, who had not armoured skins, alas, and who were facing murderous fire elsewhere.

4

They had been ordered to swing left to make a flanking front up the edge of a valley running north-west of Flers, right away beyond the village, and this they did most gallantly, although at the time they stuck out like a thin wedge into German territory, because at that time they had no support on their left (our English fellows, as I have described in an earlier despatch, had been having a fearful time in and beyond High Wood), and on the right the other English troops were busy with the capture of Flers.

It was clearly and undeniably a hazardous position for the New Zealanders all alone out there, and they were ordered to fall back to the line going straight westwards from the top of Flers village, which they helped to hold, on the night of the 15th to 16th.

From that day onwards the enemy made repeated counter-attacks. Sometimes they were in feeble strength, shattered quickly, but they grew in intensity and numbers as the days passed, while the New Zealanders were still in a rather precarious position, “a rocky position,” says one of their officers, owing to the weakness of their left flank.

Right down on that flank Germans were still holding out in shell-craters with a way open behind them, so that supports might come down to drive a wedge between the New Zealanders and the English troops north of High Wood.

This was attempted by something like a brigade of Germans, who advanced in six or seven waves upon the English soldiers—who were outnumbered by more than two to one—in a steady, determined way. They were met out in the open with the bayonet. It was the old way of fighting men meeting men, staring into each other’s eyes, trusting to their own strength and skill with sharp steel, and not to engines of war with high explosives or quick-firing guns.

If men fight it is the best way though not pleasant and agreeable for ladies to watch from silken canopies, as in the old days of the tourney, when gentlemen hacked at each other with axes, just for fun. A New Zealand officer watched it from a little distance, and his breath came quick when he described it to me. The German ranks were broken and a remnant fled.

But it was not so long or so bloody a fight as what the New Zealanders themselves had to encounter three days ago.

The enemy struck a blow against the New Zealand troops, at the joining point between those men and their comrades on the left, who had come up to the west of Flers.

The New Zealanders—who were Canterbury men—were beaten back twice, and twice regained the ground. All through the night of September 20 until the dawn of the 21st, there was violent bomb-fighting and bayonet fighting.

There was no straight line of men British on one side, German on the other. It was a confused mass, isolated bodies of men struggling around shell-craters and bits of trench, single figures fighting twos and threes, groups joining to form lines which surged backwards and forwards and a night horrible with the crash of bombs and the cries of the dying.

5

One New Zealand officer, a very splendid heroic man, was the life and soul of this defence and counter-attack.

There were moments when some of his men were disheartened because their line had fallen back, and the number of their wounded lay too thick about them. He put new fire into them by the flame of his own spirit. He led them forward again, rallying the gloomy ones, so careless of his own life, so eager for the honour of New Zealand that they followed him under a kind of spell, because of the magic in him.

They thrust back the enemy, put him to flight down the valley, remained masters of the ground when the dawn brightened into the full light of day, revealing the carnage that had been hidden in the night.

It was not the end of the fighting here. In the afternoon the enemy came again, in strong numbers—sent forward by their high command, men at the end of far telephones, desperate to retake the ground, and ordering new assaults which were sentences of death to German soldiers not at the end of far telephones but very near to British bayonets.

They came on thickly, these doomed men, shoulder to shoulder, and it was again the captain of the Canterburys who led his men against them in a great bayonet charge, right across the open.

It was bayonet against bayonet, for the Germans stood to receive the charge, though with blanched faces. For the New Zealanders came upon them at the trot and then sprang forward with bayonets as quick as knitting needles....

The Germans cried out in terror. Down the hillside, beyond, those who could escape ran, and fell as they ran. It was a rout and the end of the counter-attack.

The New Zealanders were now sure of themselves. They knew that with the bayonet they can meet the Germans as their masters. So scornful are they of their bayonet fighting that they have it in their hearts to pity them and say “Poor devils!”

To my mind, and to others, the finest heroism was shown by the New Zealand stretcher-bearers. They did not charge with the bayonet. All their duty was to go out across open country in cool blood to pick up men lying there in blood that was not cool unless they had lain there too long.

They had to go through salvoes of five-point-nines, which tore up the ground about them, and buried them, and mangled many of them. And they went quite steadily and quietly, not once or twice, but hour after hour, until more than sixty of them had fallen, and hour after hour they carried out their work of rescue quite careless of themselves.

“I am not a sentimentalist,” said a New Zealand officer to-day, as he looked at me with grave eyes, remembering those scenes, “but the work of those men seemed to me very noble and good.”

In New Zealand and in the quiet farmsteads there, those words will be read gladly, I think.

And if any words of mine could give a little extra share of honour to these Colonial boys, who have come so far overseas to fight by the side of English soldiers, I should be glad and proud too, having a heart very full of admiration for the valour of these men, who have fought in these great battles as well as any troops who shared the day with them.

XXXIV

THE CANADIANS AT COURCELETTE

1

SEPTEMBER 21

In a scrappy way I have told something about the way the Canadians fought for Courcelette. It is worth more than that as an historic narrative. From first to last, beginning with the dawn of Friday, September 15, and going on now, beyond the village, against German counter-attacks, these men from the West have shown themselves very gallant, and hard and quick in fighting qualities.

There was a body of French Canadians among them, dark-eyed fellows, of the same type as the French people among whom they found themselves by the odd chance of fate, like some of the French Chasseurs Alpins who have been fighting on our right, lithe-bodied men, with muscles like whipcord, full of individual character, and an old tradition of warfare behind them, war against nature and wild animals, away from town life.

The enemy was not sure what men he had against him down below Courcelette. I think it was to get this knowledge that he sent out a number of his bombers just before the Canadian attack was to be launched. I have already told about the sergeant who saw them coming, and about the boy by his side who was buried alive by a shell, and lived to tell me the tale with a strange smile in his brown eyes, as he leaned on a crooked stick, some old tree stump he had picked up to support him when he was weak from loss of blood. He was one of the French Canadian boys. The German bombers came out of the darkness suddenly, and pounced upon a bit of trench, flinging their hand-grenades, and trying to grab some of our men as prisoners. It was just like one of the old raids, better done by the Canadians themselves. They had a short innings, and not a man went back. A Canadian machine-gunner rushed up to his “Lewis,” and killed those who came over our parapets. One officer with twelve bombers accounted for the others.

But it was awkward happening just at the hour when the grand attack was waiting for the word “Go.” It might have disorganised the plan at the outset. The Canadians did not let it make any kind of difference to them. At the exact moment all the waves of men rose, swept over the dead bodies of the raiders, and in a great tide rolled over No Man’s Land. Three Tanks went with them, slower than the infantry, but climbing steadily over the trenches and the shell craters, and prowling around for the places from which there came a spitting fire of machine-guns. They found some of them in the Sugar Factory, and I have told how they sat down there, crumpling the emplacements under their heavy ribs, and pouring out a deadly fire.

2

The Canadian infantry had a difficult operation. The ground from the high ridge of Pozières sloped down before them to the edge of the village of Courcelette, where they had been ordered to halt and consolidate while reserve battalions—the French Canadians on the right—came up behind to “mop-up” the captured ground. A German trench ran at an angle from their objective, and as they advanced the Canadians had to take this _en passant_, as chess-players would say, the flank capturing the trench at the same rate of progress as the centre and right went forward.

It was done. Through machine-gun fire and an inferno of shrapnel and high explosives the Canadians stormed their way down the slope, shouting and cheering as they went, led by officers who urged them on, before falling, some of them, mortally wounded. In the trenches the German soldiers fought stubbornly, flinging their bombs and maintaining a rapid rifle fire until the Canadians were right upon them with the bayonet. At the sight of sharp steel they fought no more, but flung up their hands.

The Canadians had a long way to go to the outskirts of Courcelette, right across open country, and as they went the German crumps fell among them, tossing up great masses—as large as village churches—of smoke and earth filled with flying shell-splinters.

It was on the line outside Courcelette that they stopped at last to dig and gather their strength and take breath. It was late in the afternoon, I think, that the ground behind them was thoroughly cleared, and that the German defence of the Sugar Factory was finally broken with the help of the Tanks. There was a conference between the officers, those who were still unwounded. Men in the ranks asked the same question, and answered it. “Why not take Courcelette itself?”

3

The order and the honour of the new attack were given to the “mop-up” battalions behind, with the French Canadians among them, who had been advancing behind the assaulting troops as a clearing and consolidating force. The colonel of the French Canadians tells the story. He is a wiry man, typical of his race, modest, bright-eyed, keeping a sense of humour in spite of all the tragedy of war, such a man as Chaucer knew when Norman-French was spoken in English fields—“a very parfit gentil knight.”

He is proud of his French Canadians. They had a long way to go to get to Courcelette. Nearly three and a half miles to the final line given to them on the other side of the village. “We’re late, we’re late,” said the little colonel. “We must get there in time at whatever cost. French Canadians, forward!”

They were not too late. They came up to the first assaulting battalions—those who had dug in south of the village—just in time to pass through them and lead the new attack. Many men had dropped on the way. The ground was still being torn up by steel ploughs. All the air was full of the scream and whine and crash of shells. Round Courcelette there was a clatter of machine-gun fire from German hiding places. The garrison there was ready for defence.

“Allons donc, mes enfants!”

It is the way in which French officers lead their men to victory or to death.

The French Canadians, with their comrades on the left, swung round in a loop round the southern half of the village, and closed in and invaded its streets.... The capture of Courcelette was one of the astounding things in this battle of the Somme. There were 1,500 Germans in and about it, and the place was stormed by much less than that number. Dug-outs full of Germans were routed out by a few men who could have been crushed and killed by the odds against them. One Canadian boy went down into a dug-out, and after a time—what queer conversation could he have down there?—came out again with prisoners. There were twenty of them, tall, big men, who could have made a meal off this brown-eyed lad who marshalled them up.

Some of the Germans made themselves useful. A wounded Canadian officer captured five of them before too weak to get back to the dressing-station unaided. Speaking French to them, which one at least understood, he ordered his prisoners to make a stretcher for him, enforcing his command by keeping his revolver on them. From some old sticks and sandbags they made the stretcher, and then carried him down.

Two German doctors helped to dress our wounded, and worked bravely and steadily under shell-fire for many hours. One of them objected to having a sentry put near his dug-out. “I am not a fighting man,” he said. “I did not help to make this war. My work is for humanity, and your wounded are the same to me as ours, poor, suffering men, needing my help, which I am glad to give.”

4

Beyond the village that night the enemy made seven counter-attacks upon the Canadians. There were moments when even the Colonel thought that things did not look “too bright.” But all these assaults were beaten off, as the Canadians have beaten off other attacks yesterday and to-day, inflicting heavy losses and gaining more ground.

One counter-attack was repulsed by a handful of men in a way that gives a grotesque comedy to all this night scene of war filled with so much death and terror, and human courage strong in endurance. A tot of rum had been served out to each Canadian to give a glow of warmth to limbs chilled in the wet soil of shell craters and to hearts chilled by the reaction which follows fierce excitement. This handful of men were sitting in a German dug-out.

They laughed, and sang, forgetful of the scenes about them. It was as jolly as in a log-cabin of the West, by this dug-out, where a corpse lay very quiet. Again they shouted, and laughed more loudly, giving Red Indian war-cries, and other wild whoops. And that was when the counter-attack began.

It did not get very far. A body of Germans advancing over No Man’s Land to the British lines suddenly heard frightful, blood-curdling sounds. It was as though the tribes of the Blackfeet had come out upon the war-path, yelling as they swung their tomahawks and dancing round the scalps of their victims. The Germans hated to hear such a noise. It was as though all the devils of hell were upon them, laughing diabolically.... They turned and fled.

XXXV

THE ABANDONMENT OF COMBLES

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SEPTEMBER 26

The enemy cannot stand against us on his present line. That has been proved to-day and yesterday by sweeping British successes, which include the capture of Gueudecourt, Lesbœufs, Morval and Combles, with nearly 2,000 prisoners (according to my own reckoning) and a great mass of material. The German infantry was ordered to hold on to these places at all costs, to the very death.

The enemy may pretend later that they have made a voluntary withdrawal to “take up a new and stronger line of defence”—that is the usual convention—but I have talked with their officers and men and know what their orders were. They were to fight for every inch of soil against us, and they did not lack courage.

But our men and our guns have been too strong for them. As soon as we held the high ridge from the Pozières windmill through the old German switch line below Martinpuich, and above High Wood and Ginchy, their position down the slopes became untenable because of the new observation we had for our artillery.

One by one their strongholds have fallen, Courcelette and Martinpuich and Flers; now those other places, Gueudecourt, Lesbœufs and Morval. In spite of all their massed machine-guns in strong emplacements, and all their tunnelled dug-outs, and all their stubborn resistance, they could not hold on to a line here under the hurricane of fire our guns have flung upon them, and the tide of men who swept forward and overwhelmed them.

Their defence began to show signs of cracking when they were unable to force home their repeated counter-attacks by any big general scheme of offence.

It was clear that our constant hammer strokes, with those delivered by the French on our right, had demoralised and disorganised them, and that they were unable to gather reserves from other parts of the line quick enough or big enough to strike back heavily so as to thwart our progress. They had to rely mainly on their gun-power, and formidable as that is it has been mastered by ours for the time being, and could not do more than make our advance costly to our wonderful infantry, who went through its curtain fire.

Even that has weakened a little during the past forty-eight hours—our men who come back broken by it will not think so, poor fellows—and the last attacks have succeeded with far fewer casualties on our side than ever before on such a day of success in this Battle of the Somme. The casualties, indeed, were very light considering the striking successes gained. The enemy is in retreat—not for a great distance, perhaps, but certainly retreating.

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For the first time in the history of this war on the western front since the Battle of the Marne and the beginning of trench warfare the enemy has been compelled to abandon a town without a fight in it. He has withdrawn from Combles, which is a place of some importance, and more than a mere village, and our troops have entered it from the north, while the French hold the southern half.

As soon as Morval was taken yesterday, after that wonderful assault upon the double line of trenches defending it, his gunners near Sailly Saillisel, to the east, packed up and bolted away. In the night troops holding the ground between Morval and that place have melted away, and our patrols are out there trying to find out his rearguard.

Between Gueudecourt and Lesbœufs a body of German infantry tried to rally up to a counter-attack and came forward a little way with a show of strength and resolution.

Our gunners were quick to get their target. Clouds of shrapnel burst over those massed men, and their attack turned into a panic-stricken rout. They flung down rifles and packs and fled back towards Le Transloy, leaving many dead and wounded in their wake.

The worst thing that has happened to the enemy is the breaking-up of the moral of his troops. These men have been ordered to hold out in death-traps, and although there can be no slur on their courage, for they have fought well and are brave men, they have seen with dismal eyes that if they hold on longer they must die or be taken.

As soon as our men had swept across the trenches and the sunken roads where the Germans defended themselves stubbornly and entered the villages—Morval being taken from the north—the garrisons came up out of their underground places and surrendered in heaps. They could have fought longer and harder here, perhaps, but only with their backs to the walls asking for death. They had not the spirit to do that and no man would expect it of them.

They were done and dazed by the appalling intensity of the shell-fire which we had smashed over their tunnels. They were disheartened by the unfailing regularity with which the British had captured one stronghold after another since July 1, and at last after two years of utter confidence in the supreme strength of the German war-machine, their faith had been destroyed.

They have seen it crack and break, leaving them as the victims of its failure. Men who have lost faith in the one idol to which they had pledged their souls are not so strong as before. It is this loss of faith among her soldiers which is the worst thing that has happened to Germany.

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In opposition to the faith which we have now broken is the fear they have of British troops whom, once upon a time, they were taught to despise; they are stupefied by the grim way in which our men attack, reckless of loss, so that no barrage stops them, and they are amazed that men who were not soldiers a year ago should now be equal to their own best troops in fighting skill as gunners and as infantry.

A German officer who surrendered to-day with a whole company when the British stormed their way into Morval paid a tribute to them when he was taken prisoner.

“Your soldiers,” he said, “surprise me by their sangfroid. They were very cool and calm in moments when most soldiers would lose their heads.”

He was touched, too, by their kindness to him, puzzled by it, not finding any kind of hatred in their hearts now that the fighting was over.

“They asked me whether I would like to go down at once or wait until the barrage eased off. That was very good-natured of them. Then they gave me ‘kuchen’—little cakes—and called me ‘old boy’ as though they had known me before.”

They are grateful for our treatment of them, and truly some of our men are chivalrous in the way they behave to them after the bloodshed is over and the fierce and frightful things of battle.

There were two fellows on the roadside to-day, an English soldier and a German, trudging side by side to a field dressing station. Both heads were bandaged, and one man could see out of one eye and one out of the other.

Said the Englishman:

“This chap tried to gouge out my eye with his fist, and I did the same to his with my elbow, and now we get on famously together.”

Two other men came in—enemies an hour before.

“This is old Bill,” said the English soldier, pointing to a wounded German. “Where I go Bill goes. I wounded him and I took him.... Come on, Bill, old son.”

I saw 1200 German prisoners to-day just out of the battle. They lay in rows, grey body close to grey body, so that when any stood and walked about they had to step carefully over all those lying men. They were men from Morval and Lesbœufs, and some from Combles, who in the retreat in the night had mistaken their way out and come into our lines.

They were mostly strong, well-built young men—better than some of those I saw yesterday—and were nearly all Prussians from the Rhinelands. In the mass there was nothing repulsive about them, though here and there was an evil-looking face. These fresh-coloured fellows, very smart and soldierly, and with very little of the dirt of war upon them, as they had been living in the dug-outs, stared about them with curious eyes—at the British troops passing and British transports, and all the traffic that goes up to the battle lines. They were startled at finding themselves in so great a company of fellow-prisoners. They confessed to one of our officers that it was “a great British victory.”

These men were all unwounded. But in a tent not far away, and in other tents, were rows of Germans on stretchers, lying very still, and looking very grey, in blood-soaked clothes. Some of them were moaning their lives away, but English doctors were with them, attending to them just in the same way as they dealt with our wounded men carried into other tents.

“We make no difference,” said the medical officer.