13-14 September, 1914

DEATH in a WOOD on the RIVER AISNE

by Corporal John Lucy

When the British reached the River Aisne they crossed at several points and fierce battles ensued. Corporal (later Captain) Lucy, earlier wrote a description of the Battle of Mons (see page 43), endured the hardships of the retreat and was amongst the first to come into action on the Aisne. He relates, incident by incident his experiences of a day of fighting and records the loss of his brother in the same battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles.

Our advance continued steadily as the Germans were driven back from the Marne. Their rearguards showed some resistance every day, and occasionally, we picked up stragglers and wounded from the enemy army. Although we took our turn in our brigade as advanced guard and outpost duties, our battalion did not really cross swords with the enemy again until 14 September. On that day, and on the few days preceding it, rain fell, and we were not very comfortable either in bivouac or on the line of march. The weather began to get cold.

On the evening of 13 September a British aeroplane, one of the few the British Army possessed, approached us from the German side and, wheeling around, alighted in a field to the right of our marching columns. The flying officer climbed slowly out of his heavy kit, did not wait to find an officer, but shouted to us all, ‘There they are, waiting for you up there, thousands of them.’ And he waved his right arm towards the wooded heights, across the river Aisne, some three miles away.

Then he composed himself and asked for the nearest battalion commander. We showed him the mounted figure of our colonel at the head of our unit. But we did not fight that day. We went into bivouac on the south side of the river and had a meal before resting for the night.

Early next morning a battery of our field guns came into action near our bivouac. They were camouflaged with green branches of trees, and appeared to be firing across the river at some target in the woods on the other side. The tone of the orders given us, the close inspection of our ammunition, and our rapid fall-in showed that there was immediate work ahead. We marched on quickly down the sloping south side of the river valley to the River Aisne, passing close to other guns in action and making way for the ammunition wagons which were feeding the batteries.

Battalion HQ of the 11th Hussars on the Aisne.

British heavy artillery moving up on the Aisne.

It was a fine, fresh morning, and we moved on, exhilarated by a feeling of the unexpected, down a wet leafy lane, until we came to an open space between the woods and the southern bank of the river, where we made our first deployment.

We gripped our rifles hard. We felt to be on the edge of a fresh battlefield, with the curtain about to go up, and looked all about our front for the direction of the first threat of danger. Our shells swished close overhead on their way to the dominating heights on the far bank, and presently enemy shrapnel whipped and cracked above us. A curse or two expressed the nausea which every man with a stomach experiences when he feels helpless under a rain of slivers of steel and bullets hurled at him by an enemy two miles or so out of rifle shot.

My Company turned right on gaining the river and moved section by section in single file east along the river bank, and from time to time we halted a moment to crouch or lie flat behind tussocks of grass lining the bank, as the enemy shell-fire increased. We were making for the railway bridge east of Vailly, which was at that moment being crossed by an English battalion withdrawing out of action from the northern side of the river. The bridge had been blown up by the Germans and was now under steady observed shrapnel fire – also rather heavy stuff, too, judging by the sounds of the bursts and the dense rolling clouds from the explosions above and about it.

As we approached the bridge we saw that it was completely wrecked; a tangled mass of ironwork, most of which was submerged, with a dead horse held against it by the current and only a line of single planks, which sagged in the middle, as a means of getting over. This line of single planks was hastily and precariously rigged against what was left of the iron supports of the railway bridge. Crossing was a particularly nasty proposition.

We did not wait to contemplate it. A fresh English battalion crossed over as we drew nearer, and we scrambled across it, section by section, close under the bursting shells. No casualties occurred near me but shouts of alarm from behind showed that the following company had caught it. We did not turn to see. We heard that some of those hit had fallen into the river. Our commanding officer, with his usual bravery, stood upon a height on the south bank, just close to the bridge, during the whole time taken by his battalion to cross.

On gaining the other side we found the regiment which had preceded us disappearing towards our right front as it worked up the hill through the trees and undergrowth. We deployed rapidly into attack formations. A shrapnel bullet penetrated my haversack and tore into the middle of a folded towel inside it. I felt startled and angry at the tug it gave and at my narrow escape, and I pushed on with the others. The Germans had seen us cross over, and were now firing salvos at us. Our company commander was hit in the arm.

British infantry taking shelter in the lee of a bank, with shallow fox holes providing primitive protection. The Aisne marked the beginning of trench warfare.

The German Army had been pushed back from the River Marne and had halted at the River Aisne, where they dug in to stop the British and French advance.

Two or three other officers of the following companies were also hit and a good many men were knocked out, but we did not miss them in the excitement.

We went on steadily uphill, seeing nothing of the enemy. We had hardly cleared the shelled area near the bridge when bullets began whistling about us. We must have been within a couple of hundred yards of enemy riflemen, but though we looked hard through the undergrowth we could not see them. We cursed them, and relying on the luck of soldiers we bowed our heads a little, clenched our jaws and stubbornly went on. Quicker we went – on to our toes and crouching lower. In for a penny, in for a pound, quicker and quicker to get it over. Their rifles cracked sharply now, and the whistle and whine of bullets passing wide changed to the startling bangs of bullets just missing one. The near rattle of machine guns set our hearts thumping, until we saw them on the line frontage of the English on our right. They were getting it hotter. The rifle-fire in front ceased gradually, and we pushed on harder still.

Our own shells were now bursting a short distance ahead, just beyond a crest line clearly visible to us. This line marked the near edge of a large plateau, and as we made it in a rush we found this plateau edge forming a small continuous cliff of chalk varying from two to four feet high, giving good protection from bullets and fair cover from shell-fire. There were caves in the chalk banking. Automatically we halted here and our officers ordered us to improve the position by digging.

We missed some of our number when we had a look round after taking a breather. They had fallen quietly in battle, almost unnoticed, for in the attack the dead and wounded soon drop out of sight to the rear. On the whole the enemy riflemen had been rotten shots.

Our company had been forward in the attack which gained the plateau, and was now called into reserve. Another company took our place in the front, and we went underground into conveniently situated large caves, a little distance in rear of the line.

The medical officer had opened up his dressing station at the mouth of one cave, and was already busy attending to the wounded and the dead. He went along the line of those who had been hit, and his preliminary test for life in each lying figure seemed to be a pinch under the jaw. Those he found to be dead he ordered to be taken out into the open, and waved the most dangerously wounded towards his assistants for immediate attention. He wasted no words.

We had hardly entered the caves when the Germans counter-attacked, and we were at once ordered to stand up and fall in ready to go to help our people outside. The sound of the battle heard from the caves was aweinspring. Clouds of smoke from bursting shells obscured the already dim light which filtered through the cave mouth. Heavy shells crumpled into the earth roof of our shelter and shook us.

A group of officers sheltering in one of the many caves to be found on the Aisne.

Projectiles whined and crashed at varying distances, and machine guns rat-tat-tatted. The indistinct figures of stretcher-bearers collecting dead and wounded moved unceasingly in the cloudy light of the cave mouth.

We felt trapped, and wished ourselves outside fighting, instead of standing restless in the semi-darkness.

The appalling noise of the conflict outside made all very anxious as to the progress of the enemy counter-attack, We got nervy and fidgeted and avoided each other’s eyes. One interested soldier at the cave mouth morbidly occupied himself by passing in the names of the latest dead and wounded. I did not want to hear them, and though I listened with strained ears my mind could not cope with the situation. Each fresh name bludgeoned my brain.

I had hardly envisaged one strong man lifeless and gone when another name followed. The casualties appeared to be very numerous. A great sense of misery and loss began to possess me as the litany of familiar names continued, and I moved over to my brother's platoon to be near him. He appeared to be absolutely calm and his bearing had the effect of putting me at ease, so I went back to my own section very soon.

The German attack ceased. It had been beaten back with heavy loss, and all became quiet again. On examination we found that the casualties were not at all as bad as we had thought. We were now to learn a bitter lesson.

We were ordered to fall in outside the caves and out we went, shying a bit at the sight of blood-dripping stretchers propped against the wall of the cave mouth. Outside we saw some of our dead lying in grotesque positions. A few of these had previously cut their long trousers into shorts during the hot August weather; now they looked like slain schoolboys. This impression was enhanced by the peaceful and youthful looks on their dead faces. A hollow in the ground about ten yards from the caves was filled with bandaged wounded, with whom we conversed.

They did not seem very much distressed; one or two groaned in low voices, others had dilated pupils, and looked surprised in a rather silly fashion, wondering about their wounds, I supposed, while a few unimpressed ones smoked casually.

I was looking keenly at this picture of our wounded, and thinking how good and brave they were, and also envying those with slight wounds who would go away back to England, or, with luck, to Ireland, when the scene suddenly changed. A rising tearing noise like that of an approaching train heralded the arrival of a heavy shell. Nearer and nearer it came and we all crouched down where we were. The wounded squirmed lower down in their hollow.

We clenched our teeth to the shattering burst, which seemed right on top of us, and then after a pause and a deep breath I slowly raised my head to see that the shell had exploded precisely over the hollow and killed every one of the wounded.

‘Lead on, A Company,’ and we moved forward to the front line in answer to the order, glad to get off at once from the immediate scene of that awful tragedy. We halted on familiar ground, under cover of that little cliff of chalk which we had occupied yesterday. An occasional shell burst behind in the woods and some very large ones were sighing over our heads, high up on their way to Vailly, a mile below us on the river bank. Just as we came to the little cliff, the officer commanding a company on our right came striding towards us, a tall, gaunt captain with the light of battle in his eye. A very religious man he was, too, always talking about duty, and a great Bible reader. Tall, sinewy, with pale face and pale-blue eyes, colourless hair, and a large, untidy, colourless moustache, he came at us looking for blood. He reminded me of a grisly Don Quixote.

‘All the Germans have gone away, except about one platoon, which I have located in that wood to our left front. I intend to capture that enemy platoon with my Company, but I want volunteers from A Company to move across the open to support me, while I work forward through the wood, which enters the left of my Company line. Now, who will volunteer?’

I suppose he knew very well that the native pride of Irish troops could be depended on. Anyway, the whole of A Company immediately volunteered to assist. The officer selected the two nearest platoons, which happened to be mine and my brother’s. He then sent Muldoon, one of my platoon, up a tree to look across the plateau at the wood, in order to confirm the presence of the enemy for our edification. ‘Mul’, as we called him, shinned up, and presently shouted down,

‘Yes, there they are, I can see them in the woods.’

‘Good’ said the officer. A Company’s two platoons will move forward in line from here, keeping parallel to the right edge of the wood, as soon as my company gets going,’ and Don Quixote went off rapidly to launch his attack.

A rifle shot aimed at Mul cut short that lad’s curiosity, and he slid grinning and safe to the ground. We fixed our bayonets, as the enemy were close, and sorted ourselves by sections along the plateau edge, searching for easy places to surmount so as to get on to the level of the plateau.

It cannot be said that the operation was very well organized. It was all too rapid, and we got no definite objective, our task being to engage any enemy on our front by advancing to find him and attack him. My brother’s platoon suddenly got the order, unheard by me, and up went the men on to the open grassland led by their officer. Denis went ahead, abreast with his officer, too far in front of his section I thought. He carried his rifle with the bayonot fixed threateningly at the high port, and presented a good picture of a young leader going into battle, not quite necessary for a lance-corporal, he was exposing himself unnecessarily and would be one of the first to be shot at. I raised myself high over the parapet of our cliff, and shouted to him, ‘Take care of yourself,’ and I blushed at such a display of anxiety in the presence of my comrades. My brother steadied a moment in a stride which was beginning to break into a steady run forward, and looking back over his shoulder winked re-assuringly at me. The beggar would wink.

Forward he went and out of my sight for ever. I had to forget him then, because Lieutenant Waters drew his sword and signalled us. We rose from cover and doubled forward over the grass to the right of my brother's platoon. There was an uncanny silence. We could see fairly level wooded country and some cottages to our immediate front, backed by more broken landscape. With a sinking heart I realized that our extended line made an excellent target, as we topped a slight rise, and went on fully exposed across flat country without the slightest cover. The Germans were waiting for us, holding fire.

As we cleared the crest a murderous hail of missiles raked us from an invisible enemy. The line staggered under this smash of machine-gun, rifle and shell-fire, and I would saythat fully half our men fell over forward on to their faces, either killed or wounded.

Some turned over on to their backs, and others churned about convulsively. With hot throats the remainder of us went on, as there is no halt in the attack without an order.

The wood on our left, through which the other company was advancing, seemed on fire, as it sparkled with bursting enemy shells, and then became almost hidden under a pall of rolling smoke. The wood was a shell-trap, and the company had ‘bought it’, has the troops curtly say. More men fell, but my section still went strongly. Two men of the nearest-section to our left fell and both immediately sat up and began to tear open, their First Field Dressings. They had been hit low, in the legs.

A bullet ripped through the sole of my right boot as I ran on and jerked my own leg aside. For the next few paces 1 kept stamping my right foot on the ground, testing it and half expecting to see blood spurt from the lace holes. This low fire was a bloody business, and most efficient – the kind of stuff we were taught ourselves. I believe I was now beginning to get really afraid of these Germans. The high rate of concentrated fire continued, and the men were now advancing in a very thin line, with most of their number scattered on the grass behind. No officer remained.

A sergeant on the left shouted and the men nearest him got down into the prone position. We followed suit and hastily threw ourselves flat on the grass. Hardly had we done so when a machine gun raked the whole line – a weak and feeble line now and shot accurately home into it. Some of the lying men flapped about. Others, shot through the head, jerked their faces forward rapidly and lay still. I trembled with fear and horror. This was a holocaust. The relentless spray of the deadly machine gun traversed back along the line from the left towards us. The Catholic soldiers blessed themselves in a final act of resignation. But the curve of the traverse came luckily short as it swept across my section, and it traced the ground in front. Little spurts of earth showed the strike of each group of bullets, a few yards before our faces. This was more perilous than shots going over our heads because the bullets ricochetted, shrieking like some infernal cat-fight all about us, but it was better than being hit direct.

By lucky chance or instinct I saw the enemy machine gun. There it was, mounted daringly on the roof of a cottage, close to the left side of a chimney, about six hundred yards away, and directly to my front. With all my strength I shrieked the range, described the target, and ordered five rounds rapid fire. There was a heartening response as we opened fire at the first and only target we had seen in this terrible attack. In about four seconds some thirty bullets were whistling about that dark spot near the chimney as we slammed in our rapid fire, glad to have work to do, and gloriously, insanely, and incredibly the German gun stopped firing, and then it disappeared as it was quickly withdrawn behind the roof. ‘Fire at the roof below the ridge of the house, about three feet down,’ I ordered exultantly, and I could have whooped for joy, I was now commanding effectively. Damn the rest of the enemy fire. Their rifle-fire was always poor, anyway, and blow the shells, they might hit you and they might not, there was none of the deadly accuracy of the machine gun in other weapons of the enemy.

I breathed a long breath of relief and looked about. I looked right and left at my section to see that all were firing. Bugler Tymble had been wounded in the right arm and, having discarded his equipment, was moving away back. Others on the left were firing well and steadily. On my right, the nearest lay still with his face in the grass. I roared, ‘Are you hit’? and he raised his head to show a grinning face. I got angry and shouted at the scrimshanker: ‘Why the hell don't you fire?’ The man began to laugh. I did not know him well. He had arrived with the first reinforcement only about ten days before. He laughed and laughed and dug his face back in the grass. It was no grim joke, as I then suspected. The man was hysterical with fear. I did not know hysteria, and could not understand him. Some wounded had bandaged themselves and had continued to fight. The sight of them made me madder, and I edged towards the laugher, swearing at him, and I struck him twice in the ribs with my rifle butt. That steadied him, though his grin turned to a look of terror. I threatened him with a court martial and told him to pull his socks up. This sounded damn silly in the circumstances, even to myself, so I crept back to my central position to supervise the actions of more useful men.

Muldoon rose some yards to my left with his face covered in blood, which poured down on to his jacket and equipment. He had been shot through the top of the head. He came, to me and asked for the platoon sergeant. I said ‘What for ? Go back,’ and he said, ‘No, got to report first.’ And report he did, going down that awful line, under heavy fire, spurred by a most soldierly but ridiculous conscience to ask permission to fall out. He got back safe, with a peculiar wound, not at all fatal, for the bullet had hit him near the top of the head and passed under his scalp and out at the back, without injuring his skull.

We were still in great jeopardy, losing men every moment. Nine officers of the two companies – all we had – were knocked out. They fell forward in the advance waving their naked swords. The Germans, aided by the flashes of these outdated weapons, had concentrated their fire with success on our leaders. Two officers had been killed and seven wounded. From this date swords went out of fashion. Our attack had been a fiasco.

Without officers and sorely stricken, we still held on until a sergeant waved us back, so we rose and returned to where we had started, exhausted and disappointed. Some of the men walked back to Vailly. The Germans followed up our short retreat with shells, and worried us with more casualties among the few survivors. This was very harassing, almost the last straw. Our casualties had already amounted to one hundred and fifty, more than half the strength of the two unfortunate companies.

A sliver of shell hit the hysterical laugher of the front line and sent him all diddery. It struck him in the foot and, completely out of control, he rushed limping for sympathy to me, shouting ‘Oh, oh, Corporal, what shall I do?’ Someone seized him, disarmed him, took off his boots, and led him away, still groaning, ‘Oh, Corporal, Corporal, Corporal’. My vials of sympathy were emptied and I was glad to see the last of him.

A young Cork man named Lane came smiling towards me with his arm in a sling. He was of my brother’s platoon. I asked him about Denis, and he gave me the glad news that he, too, was slightly wounded in the arm, and had gone down to the village of Vailly with some other wounded. I was pleased and relieved. The next few minutes reminded me of the artist Butler’s picture of the Crimean roll-call, when the senior N.C.O.s listed our casualties from information given by the survivors:

‘08 Corrigan?’

‘Dead, Sergeant.’

‘I saw him too.’

‘Right, killed in action. Any one seen 23 Murphy?’ No answer.

‘Right, missing.’

‘What about MacRory? Anyone see MacRory coming back after he was hit? ‘No answer.

A German photograph of British dead on the Aisne battlefield.

‘Right, wounded and missing,’ and the sergeant’s stubby pencil scribbled on. The depleted company moved back the short distance to reserve and grouped in little parties to discuss their experiences. I left them, to seek the orderly-room clerk, who verified that my brother’s name had been submitted in the list of wounded of his platoon. The clerk would not tell me the total casualties. He had been forbidden to speak about them.

Actually my brother was lying dead out in front, about three hundred yards away, all this time, and I did not get to know this for days. Only one man of his section had come back alive. That I did not know either. After some days this survivor told me that my brother was killed with the rest of the section by shell fire. He also confirmed that he had been wounded first. Volunteers from other companies were called for and these went out, when darkness fell, to bring in the wounded They worked all night and suffered casualties themselves.

The company on the left had got a bad hammering. Their wood was now a shambles of wrecked trees and human bodies. Men had fallen in heaps under the intense shell concentration, yet the stout fellows had pushed on and actually entered and captured a German trench, and brought back several enemy prisoners, among whom were some gunner observers.

These gunners had a knob instead of a spike on the top of their helmets The strange enemy field-grey uniforms made some of us feel bitter, but as we continued to look at them cold reason told us that they were only troops like ourselves, and not so straight-backed either. They looked pale and scared.

The warlike commander of the left company, bleeding from several wounds in various parts of his body, and looking more fanatical than ever, would not have any of his hurts dressed until he had interrogated his prisoners. He questioned them in German, and was removed from them with difficulty and made to lie on a stretcher.

Some of our wounded lying out did not wait for rescue. They crawled and hobbled in of their own accord. One man presented a wild appearance, coming in half naked. He had been peppered with shrapnel, and had stripped himself under fire out there to look at his wounds. A man is always urgently curious about his wounds. Blotches of blood showed up startlingly on the white body of this half-naked fellow, who was a man who had knocked me out with bare fists in what already seemed the far-off days of peace. A ghastly sight, and he was simply full of abuse. He cursed us for not trying harder, and told us we had disgraced ourselves. A hardy fighter indeed, but we had had our bellyful and were in no mood to listen to his recriminations.

He was soundly cursed at in turn, and left us with a bitter twist on his thin lips, still reviling us with the vituperation of Belfast’s back streets, while his red hands wandered unconsciously from wound to wound.

He repelled us, and as he looked strong on his legs, we left him to his own devices.

An inquisitive corporal from one of the companies that had remained behind approached one Cordwain, asking him what the attack was like and the strength of the opposition we met with.

‘Hell's bells!’ said tall Cordwain, as he remembered the intensity and variety of fire we had endured. ‘We met the whole of Von Kluck’s lousy army and the bloody German navy as well!’

And he spat reflectively over the hot muzzle of his rifle.