Chapter IV: Part 4

Each gun team had with them a rifleman who was a crack shot, and who obeyed his army orders to pick off English officers. So they sniped our young lieutenants with cool and cruel deliberation. Two of them who were dressed as privates escaped for this reason. Many of the others fell.

“With so many officers gone,” said one of the Yorkshire lads, “it was every man for himself, and we carried on as best we could.”

They carried on as far as the second and third lines, in a desperate fight with German soldiers who appeared out of the tumbled earth and flung bombs with a grim refusal of surrender.

“Well, if you’re asking for it,” said one of our men—and he hurled himself upon a great German and ran his bayonet through the man’s body.

It was bloody work for boys who are not butchers by instinct. Passion caught hold of them and they saw red.

“I don’t know how it was,” said one of them with a queer thoughtfulness in his eyes as he groped back to this moment of fierce excitement. “Before I went over I had no rage in me. I didn’t want this hand-to-hand business. But suddenly I found myself fighting like a demon. It was my life or theirs, and I was out to kill first.”

There was not much killing at that spot. When most of our men were within ten yards many of the Germans who had been flinging bombs lifted up their hands and cried “Mercy!” to those whom they had tried to blow to bits.

It was rather late to ask for mercy, but it was given to them. There was a search into the dug-outs—do you understand that all this was under great shell fire?—and many Germans were found in hiding there.

“I surrender,” said a German officer, putting his head out of a hole in the earth, “and I have a wounded man with me.” “All right,” said a Yorkshire sergeant; “fetch him up, and no monkey tricks.”

But out of the hole came not one man, but forty, in a long file that seemed never to end, all of whom said “Kamerad!” to the sergeant, who answered, “Good day to you!—and how many more?”

They were a nuisance to him then. He wanted to get on and this was waste of time. But he sent back 42 prisoners with three lightly wounded fellows of his company—he could not spare more—and then advanced with his men beyond the German third line.

Bunches of men were straggling forward over the shell-broken ground towards the German line at Crucifix Trench, to the left of Fricourt.

They knew that this trench was important, that their lives were well given if they could capture it. And these Yorkshire boys from the hills and dales thought nothing of their lives so that they could take it.

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They unslung their bombs, looked to the right and left, where German heavies were falling, cursed the chatter of machine-guns from Fricourt village, and said “Come on, lads!” to the men about them. Not one man faltered or turned back, or lingered with the doubt that he had gone far enough.

They stumbled forward over the shell craters, over dead bodies, over indescribable things. Crucifix Trench was reached. It was full of Germans, who were hurling bombs from it, from that trench and the sunken road near by.

The Yorkshire boys went through a barrage of bombs, hurled their own, worried through the broken parapets and over masses of tumbled earth, and fought single fights with big Germans, like terrier dogs hunting rats and worrying them. Parties bombed their way down the sunken road.

Those who fell, struck by German bombs, shouted “Get on to ’em, lads,” to others who came up. In bits of earthwork German heads looked up, white German faces, bearded, and covered with clay like dead men risen.

They put up trembling hands and cried their word of comradeship to those enemy boys.

“Well, that’s all right,” said a Yorkshire captain. “We’ve got the Crucifix. And meanwhile our guns are giving us the devil.”

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Our gunners did not know that Crucifix Trench was taken. Some of our shells were dropping very close.

“It’s time for a red light,” said the Yorkshire captain. He had a bullet in his ribs, and was suffering terribly, but he still commanded his men.

A red rocket went up, high through the smoke over all this corner of the battlefield. Somewhere it was seen by watchful eyes, in some O.P. or by some flying fellow. Our guns lifted. The shells went forward, crashing into Shelter Wood beyond.

“Good old gunners!” said a sergeant. “By God, they’re playing the game to-day!”

But other men had seen the red rocket above Crucifix Trench. It stood in the sky like a red eye looking down upon the battlefield. The German gunners knew that the British were in Crucifix Trench. They lowered their guns a point or two, shortening their range, and German shells came crumping the earth, on either side, registering the ground.

“And where do we go next, captain?” asked a Yorkshire boy. It seemed he felt restless where he was.

The captain thought Shelter Wood might be a good place to see. He chose ten men to see it with him, and they were very willing.

With the bullet in his ribs—it hurt him horribly—he climbed out of Crucifix Trench, and crawled forward, with his ten men to the wood beyond.

It was full of Germans. At the south-west corner of it was a redoubt, with machine-guns and a bomb-store. The German bombers were already flinging their grenades across to the Crucifix.

The wounded captain said that ten men were not enough to take Shelter Wood—it would need a thousand men, perhaps, so he crawled back with the others.

They stayed all night in Crucifix Trench, and it was a dreadful night. At ten o’clock the enemy opened an intense bombardment of heavies and shrapnel, and maintained it at full pitch until two o’clock next morning.

There were 900 men up there and in the neighbourhood. When morning came there were not so many, but the others were eager to get out and get on.

The Yorkshire spirit was unbeaten. The grit of the North Country was still there in the morning after the first assault.

5

Queer adventures overtook men who played a lone hand in this darkness and confusion of battle. One man I met to-day—true Yorkshire, with steel in his eyes and a burr in his speech—it was strange to hear the Saxon words he used—rushed with some of his friends into Birch Tree Wood, which was not captured until two days later.

There were many Germans there, but not visible. Suddenly the Yorkshire lad found himself quite alone, his comrades having escaped from a death-trap, for the wood was being shelled—as I saw myself that day—with an intense fire from our guns.

The lonely boy, who was a machine-gunner without his gun, thought that things were “pretty thick,” as, indeed, they were, but he decided that the risks of death were less if he stayed still than if he moved.

Presently, as he crouched low, he saw a German coming. He was crawling along on his hands and knees, and blood was oozing from him. As he crawled, a young Yorkshire soldier, also badly wounded, passed him at a little distance in the wood.

The German stared at him. Then he raised himself, though still on his knees, and fired at the boy with his revolver, so that he fell dead. The German went on his hands again to go on with his crawling, but another shot ripped through the trees, and he crawled no more.

It was fired by the man who had been left alone—the young man I saw to-day. “I killed the brute,” he said, “and I’m glad of it.”

Our shells were bursting very fiercely over the wood, slashing off branches and ploughing-up the earth. The lonely boy searched about for a dug-out and found one. When he went down into it he saw three dead Germans there, and he sat with them for more than eight hours while our bombardment lasted. There was another lad I met who was also a machine-gunner, and alone in the battle zone. He was alone when fourteen of his comrades had been knocked out. But single-handed he carried and served his gun, from one place to another, all through the day, and part of next day, sniping odd parties of Germans with bursts of bullets.

Another sturdy fellow I met came face to face with a German, who called out to him in perfect English.

“Don’t shoot. I was brought up in England and played footer for Bradford City.... By Jove! I know your face, old man. Weren’t you at the Victoria Hotel, Sheffield?”

It was a queer meeting on a battlefield. One of the grimmest things I have heard was told me by another Yorkshire boy. A German surrendered, and then suddenly, as this lad approached to make him prisoner, pulled the detonator of a bomb and raised it to throw.

“I put my bayonet right close to him so suddenly that he was terrified, and forgot to fling his bomb. Then a queer kind of look came into his eyes. He remembered that the blooming bomb was going off. It went off, and blew him to bits.”

That is war. And the men who have told me these things are young men who do not like the things they have seen. But, because it is war, they go through to the last goal with a courage that does not quail.

The men of this division next day took Shelter Wood and Fricourt, and captured many prisoners.

VIII

HOW THE PRUSSIANS FELL AT CONTALMAISON

1

JULY 8

After the first four days of battle there was something like a lull of twenty-four hours—a lull filled with the great noise of guns—which was broken by fresh assaults made by our troops in the direction of Mametz Wood and Contalmaison. For two days now—on Thursday and Friday—there has been severe fighting in that territory, and although we lost Contalmaison last night after taking it in the morning, it is, I am sure, only a temporary set-back, for our position is strong in its neighbourhood, and great loss has been inflicted upon the enemy. The battle of Contalmaison, not yet finished, will be a distinct and important episode in the history of this campaign.

I was able to see something of the battle—all the fierce picture of our shell fire—but, at the time, with no accurate idea of what was really happening beyond our guns, and with that sense of confusion and mystery which all soldiers have when they are on the battlefield, knowing very little of what is going on to the left or right of them, not knowing what is happening to themselves, or why they stand where they do, or what order will next come to them, or whether our men are doing well or badly.

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It was early in the morning that I went out beyond many of our batteries and watched the bombardment that was to precede the infantry attacks upon the enemy’s positions in front of Contalmaison and, to the right, on Mametz Wood, where some of our men held the south-west corner. There were large bodies of troops about on high ground where our old trenches are, and bunched about in groups beyond, up a slope leading to the line from which our attack was to be made. They seemed to have nothing in the world to do except hang about in a casual way. Many of them were lying on the grass, or along roadsides, asleep. Not all the roar of the guns made them turn uneasily. They had been there all night, waiting to go up in support, and now, dog-tired, they were taking their chance of rest.

It was not quite a safe spot for sleep. Although the enemy’s guns were busy on different places, there was no knowing whether they might not shift a point or two this way at any moment. The roadway had already tempted some of their shells earlier in the morning. Tall beech trees here and there had been cut clean in half, and a litter of branches and foliage lay below the broken stumps. There were new shell craters in the field over the way, just where a company of R.A.M.C. men had sat down on their stretchers, waiting for work. But nobody seemed to worry.

A captain of Pioneers spoke to me and said, “Any news?”

He was a middle-sized, keen-looking man, with a humorous look in his grey eyes which were shaded by a steel helmet, khaki covered. He was as muddy as a scarecrow, and shivered a little after his night in the rain.

“Dashed if I know what’s happening,” he said; “one never does. Our fellows are supposed to be going up, but no orders come along. There’s our adjutant, waiting for ’em.” I looked across the road and saw the adjutant. He was lying on his back, quite straight, at full length, with his head on his pack and his waterproof coat over him. He was profoundly asleep.

The Pioneer captain pointed towards little masses of men below the crest of the rising ground, beyond which were hell-fires.

“I thought they would go up an hour ago, but they’re still waiting, poor lads. I expect they’ll go in it all right in less than half an hour.”

He stared towards Mametz village. It was under a pall of greenish smoke, and not a minute passed without a big German shell bursting over it and raising black columns of cloud.

“Nasty kind of place,” said the Pioneer. “Thought I should have to spend the night there. Glad I didn’t, though! And such a night! I never saw anything like it. Exactly like hell, only worse; a sky full of shells, and lights bursting like blazes. A regular Brock’s benefit.... Hulloa, some of ’em are going up.”

The men who were in small bunches on the low ground were getting into a new kind of order. They were moving up towards the crest in extended formation....

A German shell was coming our way. I heard its high gobbling note, and shifted my steel hat a little, and hoped it might serve. There was a nasty crash fifty yards away below the road, where some of the men were bunched.... A whistle sounded, and the R.A.M.C. men, who had been squatting on their stretchers, sprang up and ran, carrying their stretchers, down a side track. They had found some work to do.

Two other shells came closer, and we changed our position a little. It was getting rather hot.

3

But not so hot as other places, compared with which our ground was Paradise. Mametz Village, behind our lines now, was being shelled heavily by the enemy, and was a very ugly spot, but even that was a health resort, as soldiers say, compared with any of the German positions in the neighbourhood of Contalmaison. Our guns were concentrating their fire along a line north of Birch Tree Wood from Horseshoe Trench, now in our hands, across to Peak Wood and Quadrangle Trench away to Mametz Wood on the right. We were also putting a terrific barrage round the village of Contalmaison and Acid Drop Copse. Our batteries, heavy and light, seemed to be in rings round this storm centre.

The heavies were away behind, and I could only know their existence by the great shells that came rushing overhead, from invisible places at long range, with a long drone like some great harp plucked by old god Thor, as each shell crossed the valley and smashed over the enemy’s lines. They came in great numbers and from half the points of the compass, to fall upon that one stretch of ground a mile or so broad. Our field guns were not invisible.

I could see them winking and blinking in the valleys and up the slopes as far as the eye could range. They fired salvoes or rounds with sharp and separated rat-tat-tats. Every kind of gun and howitzer—old “Grandmothers,” the long six-inchers, four-point-sevens, French soixante-quinze, and our own eighteen pounders—played the devil over the German lines.

I think it was about eleven that they lifted and put a dense barrage of shells further back. For the first time in my experience, this moment was perceptible. It was a kind of hush for just a second, as though all the guns were taking breath. Then the tumult began again, while the infantry went forward into and through the smoke. A little while later I saw rockets high above the smoke in the direction of Contalmaison. Something told me, though without any certainty, that our men were in that village.

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From a visual point of view that is all I can tell, but to-day have seen some of the officers who were directing this battle, and what happened is now much clearer, though not absolutely clear in all its details. The day before yesterday, after heavy fighting in the early stages of the battle, some of our battalions took possession of the Horseshoe Trench to the north-west of Birch Tree Wood and to the south-west of Contalmaison. Other battalions to the right were stretching along a line through Birch Tree Wood to the south of Mametz Wood. A curious affair was happening in a trench called the Old Jaeger Trench, running out of the Horseshoe towards a German redoubt to the west of Peak Wood.

Part of this trench was held by the troops on the left and part by the troops on the right, and both reported and believed that they held all of it. The truth was that a gap in the middle was still held by a party of Germans, who had machine-guns and bombs with which, presently, they made themselves unpleasant. Orders were sent to clear the trench of these ugly customers, and it was done by the troops on the left. Then orders were given to clear forward to a triangle trench to the right of the Old Jaeger. It was a strong redoubt, and the Germans defended themselves so tenaciously at this point that it changed hands three times before our men held it for good.

It yielded finally when the troops on the right fought their way up to Peak Wood, captured it, and enfiladed the enemy with machine-gun fire. At that moment they saw their position was hopeless, and came running out with their hands up. Further on there was a machine-gun emplacement which was giving us a good deal of trouble, but this was bombarded and rushed, and on the evening of July 6 the machine-gun, to use the words of one of the officers, was “done in.”

Yesterday morning the attack following the bombardment extended from these points south-west of Contalmaison away to the right. Unfortunately, although the fortune of war favoured us in another way, the troops on the right were unable to make much headway. But at this time an extraordinary, and, for the enemy, a terrible, thing happened. Some battalions of the Prussian Guard Reserve, hurriedly brought up a day or two ago from Valenciennes, and thrown into this battlefield without maps or guidance or local knowledge, advanced to meet our men on the right, and walked up, by an awful stroke of chance, straight into the terrific barrage which our guns had just started round Contalmaison. A whole battalion was cut to pieces.

Many others suffered frightful things. I am told by some of the prisoners that they lost three-quarters of their number in casualties, and although this may be an exaggeration—prisoners always have the tendency to exaggerate their losses—it is certain that a mass of men were killed and wounded. As soon as our barrage lifted our troops on the right, most of them men of Yorkshire and northern counties, swept forward and without great trouble entered Contalmaison and Bailiff Wood to the north-west. It was their lights which I had seen signalling through the smoke.

It was a magnificent success, not too dearly bought. But just when our position looked full of promise for the morrow disappointing news came in last night. It is here that the details of what happened are not clear. Germans were reported to be streaming out of Mametz Wood towards Contalmaison, apparently to make a counter-attack there. The enemy’s guns were shelling the place. Rain fell heavily, and our men who had fought so well and so long were exhausted.

Owing to the difficulty of communication and other troubles which happen at those times, the situation became confused, and late in the evening it was reported that Contalmaison had been evacuated as a temporary measure for defensive reasons.

At the same time it was also reported that Mametz Wood had been so heavily shelled by our guns that much damage had been inflicted upon the Germans inside, some of whom had escaped to our lines. We are now holding the outskirts of Contalmaison, in, or in the neighbourhood of, the cemetery, and, I believe, Acid Drop Copse, so that we are in a sound position for further attack.

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A large number of prisoners were taken, and they came straggling back over the battlefield in miserable little groups. Some of them carried our wounded on stretchers or on their backs, and our men carried their wounded.

They were the remnants of the 3rd Prussian Guards Division which has been so utterly broken that it no longer exists as a fighting unit. Those who did not fall into our hands have been withdrawn from the line. The moral of the men as well as their fighting force has been smashed. Even the officers admit that they have no more stomach for the fight, and several of the men with whom I spoke to-day were frank in saying that they are glad to be prisoners to be safe at last from the frightfulness of this war.

Some of them told me that after leaving Valenciennes a few days ago, after our attack had started, they were brought to Cambrai, and while the officers were sent on by motor-car they marched a long distance through unknown country to the front. They do not know the names of the villages through which they passed, their officers had no maps, and they had an ominous feeling that they were going to their doom. But the strength of our artillery, and its deadly accuracy of aim, surprised them.

They did not know the English had such gunners. Still more were they surprised by the dash of our infantry when they heard that they had against them “men of the ‘New Army.’” “We thought they were Guards,” said these Prussian prisoners, who belonged chiefly to the Lehr, Grenadiers and Fusiliers—all Guards’ Divisions—the 70th Jaeger and the 110th, 114th and 190th regiments of the line. Some of them I spoke to were Poles from Silesia—“ich kann nur ein wenig Deutsch sprechen” (I can only speak a little German), said one of them. Yet they were tall, hefty men of good physique and well-fed. Some of them were middle-aged fellows, and fathers of families, corresponding to the French Territorials. They spoke of their wives and children, and their tired, dazed eyes (for they were just down from the field of fire) lighted up at the thought of going home again after the war.

“God send a quick ending to the war!” said one of them, and he spoke the words as a prayer with his hands upraised.

I sat in a little dug-out, bomb-proof, perhaps, but not sound-proof, because the noise of guns was appallingly close and loud while some of the men were being brought in to be examined by a bright-eyed officer, who spoke their dialects as well as their language, and had an easy way with him so that they were not frightened.

They answered frankly, in a manly way, and were grateful for our treatment of them. A queer scene inside these walls of sandbags, lighted by German candles, filled with all sorts of litter from German pockets—great clasp-knives, leaden spoons, cartridge clips, compasses, watches, pencils. One of the investigating officers was the son of a famous musician, and seemed to find an intense interest in his job, though new batches of prisoners keep arriving through day and night, so that his meals and his sleep are interrupted.

But with his brother officers he is accumulating a store of information, and sees all the drama of the war, and all its misery for the enemy, between these sandbags, and in the dim candlelight which flickers upon the worn faces of German soldiers taken an hour before up there where the shells are falling.

IX

A CAMEO OF WAR

1

JULY 9

Slowly, but quite steadily, we are drawing our lines closer about the enemy’s strong places along the whole extent of our attacking front in order that one by one he must abandon them. Last night our troops captured new trenches about Ovillers-la-Boiselle, so that the pressure upon that place is tighter, and during the past eighteen hours we have established ourselves in the Bois des Trones, and its neighbourhood to the east of Montauban.

The meaning of our attacking methods and of the hard fighting at different points may not be clear to people who do not realise the position which our men have to storm. It has often been said that the enemy’s lines, which stretch from the sea to the Vosges, are one great fortress, and this is true, but it is more essentially and even technically true of the line through which we broke on the first day of July.

The great German salient which curves round from Gommecourt to Fricourt is like a chain of mediæval fortresses connected by earthworks and tunnels. The fortresses, or strong places as we now call them, are the ruined villages—stronger in defence than any old tower because they are filled with machine-guns, trench-mortars, and other deadly engines—of Gommecourt, Beaumont-Hamel, Thiépval, Ovillers-la-Boiselle and Fricourt.

In spite of the superb courage of those British battalions which flung themselves against those strongholds on the left side of the German salient they did not fall, but breaches were made in their defences which are now being widened and deepened. On the southern side, where the attack succeeded, La Boiselle and Fricourt and further eastwards Mametz and Montauban, are ours, and the attack is pushing further in to turn the strong places on the left from within the fortress walls, as it were, while they are being weakened by assaults from without, gradually putting the strangle-grip upon them. If we have luck and keep striking deeper into the salient, as we have done during the past twenty-four hours at Contalmaison and Ovillers, it would seem to me as if the strong places on the left must either be evacuated by the enemy or surrounded and taken, with their imprisoned troops, by us.

I saw the scene of this struggle for the enemy’s strongholds to-day almost as if I were looking into the mirror of the Lady of Shalott. It seemed like that, strangely unreal, as though in an image—and yet terribly real and vivid—because I came upon it suddenly, by accident, arranged for me by a gap in a hedge and by two trees on each side of the gap, like the frame of a picture.

I had been up to the lines in search of an officer whose headquarters is in dug-outs below the crest of a hill. Beyond this crest and another one beyond that the fires of hate were burning all right. I could tell that by the smoke clouds which came black, and white, and green, into the fleecy sky of this July day in France, and by the noise of the guns all about me. But I did not trouble to climb to the crest. There were interesting things to see below and fine men whom I wanted to meet again before they go nearer to those fires.

I passed two friends on the roadway riding in the centre of a long column of troops, and when I waved my hands to them and shouted “Good luck!” they turned in their saddles and waved back and smiled in a way that one remembers through a lifetime. I did not trouble to climb the crest because there were some captured German guns below it worth seeing as the first fruits of victory.

They were being fastened to our own gun-carriages and taken off to the place where such trophies go, cheered by French townsfolk on the way. Queer, beastly things were some of these captured engines. There were long wooden barrels hooped with steel, and with a touch-hole to fire the charge for a “plum-pudding” bomb large enough to blow up ten yards of trench—as primitive as the engines of war used in the fifteenth century.

It was on the way back that I came upon the gap in the hedge. I passed camps of men and horses, masses of guns and long lines of dug-outs in chalk banks, where soldiers sat in the entries on this Sunday afternoon, smoking their pipes with an air of profound peace in spite of the noise of shell-fire; and large bodies of splendid troops, English and Scottish, tramping up the roads, all powdered with white dust, or lying under the shadows of wayside trees, sleeping on their backs with the sun full on their bronzed, sweat-begrimed faces. It was the madding crowd of war, with a tangle of traffic on the roads, and kicking mules making beasts of themselves at the sight of a motor-car, and artillery wagons with creaking axles plunging through it all under the daring guidance of red-faced boys with short whips.

Turning off the road, away from all this turmoil, and presently, through the gap in the hedge, I saw, quite unexpectedly, the scene of war across the fields in front of me, all gold with that weed which is ruining so many harvest fields of France. It was Mametz Wood. I knew at once the queer shape of it with a great bite out of its western side. In spite of all our shell fire it is still thick with foliage, upon which the sunlight lay, casting a great black shadow underneath. Just below it was Peak Wood, a row of broken trees by a sunken road, and a triangle trench, for which our men fought desperately, so that it changed hands three times before they won it finally, on Friday afternoon.

To the left of Mametz Wood and on a line with it was Contalmaison, and on the left of that Bailiff Wood, which we captured and lost again the day before yesterday, and then further left Ovillers-la-Boiselle, and completing the crescent, La Boiselle itself.

2

Between the gap in the hedge I saw again one of the world’s great battlefields, and every detail of it was so clearly and sharply defined in the sunlight that it was like a Pre-Raphaelite picture painted in vivid colours. I could count the shell-holes in the roofs of Contalmaison village, and the château there, standing to the right of a little wood, was brought so closely forward by a stereoscopic effect that I could look into the blackness of its broken windows.

Down below me were our trenches, and I saw our men in them. Some of them were outside the trenches, strolling about in the open, in little groups, or walking about on a lone track, as though taking a quiet half-hour on this Sunday afternoon.

And yet they were in the centre of the battlefield, and over their heads came an incessant flight of shells, our shells which I could see falling in the German lines, and in the fields about them German shells, bursting with dull crashes and with clouds of black and greenish smoke. All the power of destruction was at work, but because of the utter calm and beauty of the sky and the golden light over all the scene it seemed to me, standing on the edge of it, less deadly, like a dream of war.

It was no dream. Three of our shells followed each other in a group and burst with one explosion against the left-hand tower of Contalmaison château, smashing off a turret as though it were a card-castle.

Our shells were flinging up fountains of black earth and smoke in the German lines beyond—at Pozières. All round the battlefield there were the black clouds of shell fire breaking and rising and spreading over Bailiff Wood, at Ovillers, and between the broken tree trunks of La Boiselle. Men were being killed as usual, là-bas. But our shells were doing most of the damage.

An extraordinary thing happened as I looked across the château of Contalmaison. The earth seemed suddenly to open in the enemy’s lines and let forth the smoke of its inner fires. It gushed out in great round, dense masses, and rose to a vast height, spreading like the foliage of some gigantic tree. It was not a mine.

The explosion from a mine flings up a black mass with jagged edges like a piece of black-cardboard cut into teeth. But this was a regular uprising of curly black clouds of great volume, getting denser, and coming continuously. I watched it for twenty minutes or more, and could not make out its meaning, but guessed that we had blown up an ammunition store.

Two great explosions which came quite a few seconds after the first vomit of smoke suggested this. So I went away from the picture through the gap in the trees. Down in the valley where I passed the enemy’s shells were coming rather near. A heavy crump burst on a knoll close by, and some officers and men were watching with that curious smile men have at times when they know their lives depend upon a freak of chance. It is an ironical smile, and rather grim.

X

THE ASSAULT ON CONTALMAISON

1

JULY 9

I had an idea that there would be “something doing” to-day at Contalmaison, and I went over the fields towards it, past some of our batteries, past columns of troops marching with their bands along the roads which powder them with white blinding dust, past great camps and ammunition columns, and litters of empty shell cases remaining over from the great bombardment, and past bodies of soldiers stretched out upon the grass and sleeping in the warm sunlight close behind the fighting lines, until I came to a little crest looking down to Contalmaison village, and the woods about it.

Mametz Wood was very quiet this afternoon. As neither side could see exactly the position of its troops underneath the heavy foliage—our men, who were fighting last night, hold a line about half-way through—the gunners were chary of shelling it severely. Now and again a burst of shrapnel smoke puffed against the dark background of the trees, and the shell slashed through the branches, but that was not often, and the wood seemed very peaceful. Looking at it one’s imagination found it difficult to realise that perhaps there were men there who had dug themselves into the earth beneath the spreading roots, and that British and German patrols were feeling their way, perhaps, from one tree to another, through the glades, until they came into touch and exchanged some rifle shots before falling back to their own line. I could only guess at that, and could see nothing but the tight foliage, yellow in the sun and black in the shadows.

There were plenty of shells falling elsewhere, and it seemed to me that the enemy had brought up new batteries to strengthen his defence. His shell-fire was certainly more intense, and wider-spreading, than during the past few days round here. He was bombarding our positions from La Boiselle to Montauban very fiercely. The poor broken wood of La Boiselle, which our men captured after desperate fighting, was being searched by his black shrapnel, and every now and then by one of his “universals,” which broke with a vivid cloud of greenish fumes, very prolonged in density, and forming fantastic shapes as it dissolved. One such cloud, metallic in the brilliance of its green, was like a winged woman with a Medusa face.

High explosives were falling into Montauban village, raising volumes of rose-coloured clouds, beautiful in the sunlight. I think it must have been the dust of red bricks flung up from ruined houses.

2

At half-past three in the afternoon the enemy put a very heavy barrage in a straight line below Contalmaison. One by one the shells burst, and so quickly down the line and back again that they formed a wall of black smoke with only a few gaps.

“It is so nice to get a little fresh air!” said a young gunner officer who was next to me, reporting for his battery, which speaks from afar with a very gruff voice. “During the first few days of the ‘show’ I lived indoors”—he pointed to the dark entry of a dug-out—“but now I’m getting sunburnt again. The men enjoy this open fighting. Look at ’em!”

There were men moving about the battlefield utterly regardless of the trenches—the old German trenches, marked by billows of brown earth (brown because of our gun-fire which ploughed it up), and more regular lines of white earthworks, which were our own parapets before the advance. A long column of them was winding very slowly round towards Contalmaison.

“Looks as if they were going up to support an attack,” said an officer close to me.

Other groups of khaki-coloured men were moving over the ground which one sees southward from the tall chimney of Pozières village which we were bombarding heavily.

I thought back to the Ypres salient for a moment. Men do not move about so freely there! Or between Loos and Hulluch, where over the wide barren stretch of desolation no human being is ever seen, or, if seen, killed. But—“it is nice to get a little fresh air” after the imprisonment in the trenches, and this open warfare is enormously better. It is better even to die in the open, with the wind upon one’s face, standing among the poppies, underneath the blue sky, which to-day was glorious with white snow-mountains piled high with dazzling peaks in its sea of blue and sunlight.

And so our men are touched with a kind of spiritual joy to be fighting above ground again instead of crouching in ditches—though personally I like a handy hole at times.

In the very centre of the battlefield for which some of our men fought and died a day or two ago, one tall fellow was signalling to somebody about something. Now and then a German shell fell dangerously close to his position sending up a fountain of earth and smoke, but he kept talking with his dot-and-dash to a far and invisible friend. It seemed an interesting monologue, as though he had important things to tell. It seemed to be addressed to the ruins of Contalmaison. There were moments when its old French château, set in a little wood, was lit up by a splash of golden light as the white clouds drifted by, so that I could almost count its bricks, and could see how the shells which I watched yesterday had opened its roofs. But the left hand tower was knocked off this morning by a direct hit from that same battery whose fire was being observed by the young gunner officer with whom I sat to-day. It is a wonder the shell did not smash the whole château to a pitiful ruin, but it took the tower _en passant_ as chess players say.

At four o’clock our guns concentrated upon Contalmaison, Acid Drop Copse—the poor little straggly wood to the right of Mametz—and the German trenches defending the Contalmaison ridge. Smoke belched over the battlefield, and the song of the shells was loud and high. It was under those shells falling beyond them and through the smoke that a body of our men moved forward to the assault upon the village.

3

JULY 10

The village of Contalmaison is ours again. Whether we ever held it before, by more than handfuls of men, who went in and went out, is doubtful. Certainly some men succeeded in getting there from Caterpillar Wood and Acid Drop Copse, because I met them afterwards with wounds in their bodies, but it is difficult to know what happened.

One can only guess that Germans came up from their dug-outs after our men had penetrated the outskirts and made use of the darkness with their machine-guns and bombs.

What happened last night is clear enough. I have already described in a previous dispatch how we concentrated our fire upon the positions in front of the village and then shelled the village itself with terrific intensity.

I saw the beginning of this bombardment, and watched our men going up to support the attack which was to follow. It was begun when fresh troops who had been brought up to help the tired men who had been fighting in this part of the line under heavy shell-fire for several days advanced under the cover of our guns to the left and right of the village.

It was already hemmed in on both sides, for other British troops were in firm possession of Bailiff Wood to the left, and during the evening, by a series of bombing attacks, Mametz Wood to the right had been almost cleared of Germans, who are now only in the outer fringe of it.

The enemy in Contalmaison knew that their position was hopeless. When our guns lifted they heard the cheers of our infantry on both sides of the village, and many of them—at least many of those who were still alive and unwounded—streamed out of the village in disorderly retreat, only to be caught behind by our extended barrages between Contalmaison, Pozières and Bazentin-le-Petit, so that their rout became a shambles.

Our men were quickly into the village, and having learnt a lesson by the experience of other troops at other places made a thorough search of machine-gun emplacements and dug-outs, so that there should be no further trouble with this wasps’ nest.

4

The men left in Contalmaison were in a dreadful state, having suffered to the very limit of human endurance, and beyond. They were surprised to find themselves living enough to be taken prisoners.

One of these men with whom I talked this morning told me a tragic tale. He spoke a little English, having been a cabinet-maker in the Tottenham Court Road some years ago before he went back to Württemberg, where, when the war began, he was, as he said, taken and put in a uniform and told to fight, though it was not his trade, poor devil.

With other men of the 122nd (Bavarian) Regiment he went into Contalmaison five days ago. Soon the rations they had brought with them were finished, and owing to our ceaseless gun-fire it was impossible to get fresh supplies. They suffered great agonies of thirst, and the numbers of their dead and wounded increased steadily.

“There was a hole in the ground,” said this German cabinet-maker, whose head was bound with a bloody bandage and who was dazed and troubled when I talked with him. “It was a dark hole which held twenty men, all lying in a heap together, and that was the only dug-out for my company, so that there was not room for more than a few.”

“It was necessary to take turns in this shelter, while outside the English shells were coming and bursting everywhere. Two or three men were dragged out to make room for two or three others.”

“Then those who went outside were killed or wounded. Some of them had their heads blown off, and some of them had both legs torn off, and some of them their arms.”

“But we went on taking turns in the hole, although those who went outside knew that it was their turn to die, very likely. At last most of those who came into the hole were wounded, some of them badly, so that we lay in blood.”

“There was only one doctor there, an ‘unteroffizier’”—he pointed to a man who lay asleep on the ground, face downwards—“and he bandaged some of us till he had no more bandages.”

“Then, last night, we knew the end was coming. Your guns began to fire all together—the dreadful ‘trommelfeuer,’ as we call it—and the shells burst and smashed up the earth about us.”

“We stayed down in the hole waiting for the end. Then we heard your soldiers shouting. Presently two of them came down into our hole. They were two boys and they had their pockets full of bombs.”

“They had bombs in their hands also, and they seemed to wonder whether they would kill us. But we were all wounded, nearly all, and we cried ‘Kameraden!’... And now we are prisoners—and I am thirsty.”

Other prisoners told me that the effect of our fire was terrible in Contalmaison, and that at least half of their men holding it were killed or wounded, so that when our soldiers entered last night they walked over the bodies of the dead.

These men who had escaped were in a pitiful condition. They lay on the ground utterly exhausted most of them, and—that was strange—with their faces to the earth. Perhaps it was to blot out the vision of things seen.

I shall remember the cabinet-maker of the Tottenham Court Road. In spite of the clay which caked his face and clothes and the bloody rag round his head he was a handsome bearded fellow with blue eyes which once or twice lighted up with a tragic smile, as when I asked him when he thought the war would end.

“In 1915,” he said, “when I was wounded at Ypres, I thought the war would end in a few months. And a little while ago I thought so again!”

Then he muttered something to himself, but loudly enough for me to hear the words—“Surely we cannot go on much longer?”

I left these men, and further down the road saw many more prisoners. There were nearly three hundred of them marching down a side track, between some ripening corn, under mounted escort, their grey-blue uniforms hardly visible until I was closer to them against the background of the wheat.

Most of them were young, healthy-looking men, who walked briskly, and it was only a few behind who limped as they walked, and looked broken and beaten men.

5

It was a good day for us in prisoners, for about 500 have come down from Contalmaison, Mametz Wood and the Trones Wood as living proofs of our advance in all those places.

All the prisoners speak of the terror of our artillery fire, and documents captured in their dug-outs tell the same tale in words which reveal the full horror of bombardment.

“We are quite shut off from the rest of the world,” wrote a German soldier on the day before our great attack. “Nothing comes to us; no letters. The English keep such a barrage on our approaches, it is terrible. To-morrow morning it will be seven days since this bombardment began; we cannot hold out much longer. Everything is shot to pieces.”

“Our thirst is terrible,” wrote another man. “We hunt for water, and drink it out of shell-holes.”

Many of the men speak of the torture of thirst which they suffered during our bombardment.

“Every one of us in these five days has become years older. We hardly know ourselves. Bechtel said that, in these five days, he lost 10 lbs. Hunger and thirst have also contributed their share to that. Hunger would be easily borne, but the thirst makes one almost mad.”

“Luckily it rained yesterday, and the water in the shell-holes, mixed with the yellow shell sulphur, tasted as good as a bottle of beer. To-day we got something to eat. It was impossible before to bring food up into the front line under the violent curtain fire of the enemy.”

One other out of hundreds tells all in a few words:

“We came into the front line ten days ago. During those ten days I have suffered more than any time during the last two years. The dug-outs are damaged in places, and the trenches are completely destroyed.”

We do not gloat over the sufferings of our enemy, though we must make them suffer, and go on suffering, that they may yield. It is the curse of war, the black horror which not even the heights of human courage may redeem, nor all the splendour of youth eager for self-sacrifice.

I have seen things to-day before which one’s soul swoons, and which, God willing, my pen shall write, so that men shall remember the meaning of war.

But now, when these things are inevitable, we must look only to our progress towards the end, and to-day we have made good progress.

Yesterday I wrote of the position we attacked on July 1 as a great German fortress with a chain of strongholds linked by underground works.

In ten days, by the wonderful gallantry of our men and the great power of our guns we have smashed several of those forts—as strong as any on the Western front, and defended stubbornly by masses of guns and troops—and have stormed our way in so deeply that the enemy is now forced to fall back upon his next line of defence.

The cost has been great, but the enemy’s losses and the present position in which he finds himself prove the success of our main attack.

For the first time since the beginning of the war the initiative has passed to us, and the German Headquarters Staff is hard pushed for reserves.

XI

THE BATTLE OF THE WOODS

1

JULY 12

For several days now I have been giving a chronicle of hard fighting at several important points on the way to the second German line, with such scenes as one eye-witness may describe in a great battle in which many different bodies of troops are engaged upon a wide front.

The fortunes of war have varied from day to day, almost from hour to hour, so that positions taken one evening have been lost in the morning and again captured by the afternoon. Writing as events are happening, one’s narrative becomes as confused as the confusion of the battlefield itself, where troops know nothing, or very little, of what is doing to their right and left, until some general scheme of operations is completed.

By the capture of Contalmaison and ground to each side of it a general scheme of progress has been achieved, and, although fighting does not cease about these points, it is now possible to give a clearer idea of the battle as it has developed up to the present moment.

I think it may very well be called the Battle of the Woods, for the chief characteristic of it has been the determined effort of our troops to take and hold a number of copses and small forests between the first and second German lines.

On the left of Contalmaison is Bailiff Wood, north-eastwards of the Horseshoe Redoubt. If we could get that and keep it Contalmaison itself could be enfiladed and attacked from the west as well as from the south. Away to the right of Contalmaison is Mametz Wood, even more important, both in size and position with Bernafay Wood still further eastwards and Trones Wood on the right again. Other small woods or copses to the south of Contalmaison were strong fighting points, from Shelter Wood to Round Wood and Birch Wood at the top of the Sunken Road and Peak Wood to the left of the Quadrangle Trench.

Some of these places are but a few shell-slashed trees serving as landmarks, but Bailiff Wood, Mametz Wood, Bernafay Wood, and Trones Wood are still dense thickets under heavy foliage hiding the enemy’s troops and our own, but giving no protection from shell-fire.

It is for these woodlands on high ground that our men have been fighting with the greatest gallantry and most stubborn endurance, suffering more than light losses, meeting heavy counter-attacks, gaining ground, losing it, retaking it, and thrusting forward again, with a really unconquerable spirit, because they know that these woods are the way to the second bastion of the German stronghold.