The Fifth Army Infantry Training School was near the village of Caix, only twelve miles east of Amiens and a comfortable thirty miles from the line where the 36th (Ulster) Division faced the southern suburbs of St Quentin. It was a tricky frontage. Not long before the Division moved in, the Germans had launched a local attack and captured a stretch of line from the French. Consequently, although No Man’s Land here was wide, it was inconveniently traversed by old saps and communication trenches which led straight to the enemy’s wire and into his trenchline. It was a simple matter for patrols and raiders of both sides to close in without warning, and a tour in this sector was invariably marked by a succession of alarms and excursions which gave a whole new meaning to the term ‘relief’ when a battalion’s stint was over.
The 2nd Royal Irish Rifles had been thankful to hand the trenches over to their 15th Battalion and move back to the village of Grand Séraucourt in time to celebrate St Patrick’s Day as genially as conditions on active service would allow. They were also reasonably comfortable, for Grand Séraucourt was a large village – too large to have been completely devastated by the Germans’ scorched-earth policy of the year before. The interior of the roofless sugar-beet factory that had once supported the local economy was a jumble of mangled machinery, and the largest of the houses had been blown up, but there were enough comparatively undamaged buildings in Grand Séraucourt, and in the neighbouring hamlet of Le Hamel, to put some sort of covering over the heads of most of the Battalion. Next morning three of the junior officers were delighted to be detailed to attend a platoon commanders’ course at Caix. It was a five-day course and so, including travelling time, Lieutenant Tom Witherow calculated that the jaunt would last at least a week. The mild headache induced by the St Patrick’s Night festivities rapidly dissipated at the prospect.
Witherow and two other junior officers, Marshall and Crawford, hitched a lift in a lorry as far as Ham. The town of Ham had escaped the fate of other towns in the path of the Germans’ retreat, for they had used it as a collecting point for women and children evacuated from the forward areas, and the town still retained much of its peacetime aspect. Some shops were open and, since XVIII Corps Headquarters had been set up in the town, cafés and restaurants continued to do good business. The streets bustled with orderlies, with NCOs, with staff officers, and also with birds of passage, for Ham was the railhead for the line. Unlike troops proceeding on leave, who hung around the station with natural impatience, Witherow and his friends were not in the least disturbed by the discovery that no train was due to leave for Nesle and Amiens for several hours. They enjoyed a leisurely lunch washed down by a quantity of indifferent wine, and took a post-prandial stroll in search of the officers’ clothing store, where Witherow purchased a new tunic. He was sorely in need of it, for his old one had seen service on the Somme, to say nothing of Passchendaele and Cambrai, and it was hardly fit to be seen. The new tunic cost five pounds, which was a tidy sum to a subaltern whose pay was a mere ten shillings and sixpence a day, out of which he was obliged to pay his mess bill. But there had been nothing to spend money on since his return from New Year leave in Belfast, so Witherow paid up with a good grace, and the corporal-storeman wrapped the tunic with as much care as if it had been purchased in Savile Row. It was 19 March. A few days later, when the battle began and soldiers were hurrying back through the streets of Ham, the same man would be flinging tunics free to anyone who would take them.
Stretched across two miles of front, the 10th Essex had moved into support positions in the battle zone, and they were quite aware that there were few reserves behind them. The tension in the air was almost palpable; the Germans were inconsiderate enough to shell Ly-Fontaine, and it was an unwelcome contrast to the peaceful fortnight they had just spent in the front line, where everything had been extraordinarily quiet. The weather had been fine and warm, the shelling had been minimal, and they had escaped the irksome duties that fell to the lot of support troops toiling to dig trenches in the battle zone and, by way of light relief, interminably rehearsing the march to battle positions. By comparison the front line was a picnic, and, apart from keeping an eye open for any suspicious movement on the part of the enemy over the way, the Essex had been pretty well on holiday. The River Oise spread into miniature lakes between the outposts in the swampy scrub, the stunted trees and bushes were festooned with trails and puffballs of Old Man’s Beard, the first wild flowers were in bloom, and the sun was often warm enough to tempt an early dragonfly to perform its iridescent dance above a patch of water. Last summer both French and German soldiers on either side of the same waterscape had been driven near-demented by plagues of mosquitoes, but in springtime there were no such pests to spoil the idyll and only the thud of an occasional importunate shell disturbed the peace. The officers even sent back to Battalion HQ for their valises (which doubled as sleeping-bags), so that they could slumber in comfort, and relays of men had taken baths in the brewery behind Moÿ, which was actually in the front line. There was one bit of excitement. A man lying on his back on a firestep, the better to survey a dogfight high above the trench, was hit on the nose by a spent bullet dropping from the sky. He was the only casualty of their two-week stint in the line.
Now the Essex hardly needed to be told that they were for it.
A German aeroplane was brought down not far from Battalion HQ in Ly-Fontaine, and the pilot and observer – both miraculously unhurt – were sent back to Brigade Headquarters. There, under interrogation, they disclosed the very hour of the attack. It was due to begin at 4.40 Berlin time the following morning.1
Colonel Frizell was on leave, and Major Tween was in temporary command of the Battalion. Scattered as they were, it took him hours to go round the four companies, to make sure that every detail had been attended to, and that every officer and man knew where he should be and what he must do when the enemy attacked. He warned them that tomorrow was likely to be a trying day, and advised them to turn in early and get what sleep they could. And he wished them luck.
After he had gone, and after they had inspected rifles and seen the men settled, the officers quietly packed their gear, checked their revolvers, and changed into their shabbiest uniforms before lying down to rest, and to sleep if they could.
As wave after wave of assault troops made their way towards the line, it seemed to the German soldiers that their whole army was on the move. Hans Schetter was not marching with the rest of his company, because he had been given a special assignment on the team of regimental observers. It was a responsible job, and a great deal would depend on it, for their task would be to send back information on the progress of the troops, and not only the ranging of the field guns and trench mortars but the orchestration of the battle itself would depend on this vital intelligence. But the privilege of supplying it was not an unmixed blessing. After dark his company would move up to take its place in the front line, but Schetter had set off with Leutnant Mack many hours earlier. Arrayed in full equipment, carrying a heavy telescope was warm work. He worked up a fine sweat, and the telescope seemed to grow heavier with every mile. The British guns were paying special attention to the roads that led to the line, and a shell occasionally fell too close for comfort. Nevertheless he was fascinated by what he saw.
Musketier Hans Schetter, 3rd Coy., 231st Reserve Infantry Regt., 50th [German] Reserve Division
We walk through Le Catelet, a French town that is almost completely destroyed. On the roadside immense quantities of ammunition are piled high and covered with branches and hay for camouflage. After Le Catelet we reach the Schelde Canal, where a large distillation station for drinking water has been built for our troops. We smell gas and hear shells flying over our heads. A German ammunition supply column is smashed to pieces by the English artillery, and dead soldiers and horses are scattered among the wrecked vehicles. After reporting to Staff Headquarters, we finally find space in a Red Cross dugout about 200 metres behind the front line. We are welcomed by Bavarian troops who think we come from Württemberg because our lieutenant has a blue and red cockade on his cap, for Oldenburg.
At 4.40 a.m. the big cannonade will start. We are watching the time and go to the entrance of the dugout to watch the passing troops and vehicles.
On the other side of the line, on the extreme right of the 14th Division, young Jim Brady was also in a field-ambulance dugout, on the outskirts of Essigny. With two four-man stretcher squads and two ambulance drivers squeezed into it, it was cramped and extremely stuffy behind the heavy gas-curtains at the foot of the entrance stairs, and only Captain Duncan, the medical officer, had some degree of privacy in his tiny cubbyhole at the end of a timbered passage. The atmosphere was getting thicker by the minute, and Jim and his friend And Chapman were glad to get outside for a breath of air. It was a dark, misty night. The merest crescent of the old moon hung hazily in the sky, and it was almost eerily quiet.
101264 Private Jim Brady, 43rd Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps., 14th Division
We scrambled to the summit of a bluff overlooking a wide stretch of the flat French countryside and gazed into the blackness. It hung like a canopy over the front lines just over a mile away. Now and again there was the dazzling glare of a Very light or the yellow flash of a light gun and an occasional thud as the Germans slung over a couple of whizz-bangs. But mostly the guns were still, and in the distance we could quite clearly hear the rumble of enemy transport – doubtless trundling eager young Bavarians up to their front-line jump-off positions, ready for the attack.
It was not a comfortable thought. The two boys raced down the hill and back to the cosy fug of the dugout. Not far ahead, beyond the concealing darkness, Reinhold Spengler was already in the line.
Leutnant Reinhold Spengler, 2nd Coy., 1st Bavarian Infantry Regt., 1st Bavarian Division
A little before midnight the Company Commanders were told by Rittmeister Nüsslein, Commander of the 1st Battalion, that the following morning was set for the attack. He said that our infantry attack was to be preceded by a four-and-a-half-hour bombardment, and the enemy trenches and battery positions would get the full brunt of it. At 9.15 a.m. we were to go over the top with assault packs and fixed bayonets, and every five minutes the rolling barrage ahead of us would move forward. We synchronized our watches and, holding my pocket watch in my hand, I saw that my palms had begun to sweat in anticipation. I passed on the information to my section leaders and NCOs, and they told the men.
Private Jim Brady
I went along the passage to see Captain Duncan, and said, ‘Would you like a mug of tea, Sir? I’m just going to make some.’ The Doc looked up from his book and said, ‘I wouldn’t say no, Brady.’ The brew – no milk, no sugar – wasn’t exactly ‘sergeant-major’s tea’, but it was wet and warm and better than nothing. I took him a hunk of bread and jam, but he said he didn’t feel like anything to eat. Then he did a strange thing. He fumbled in his pocket and took out his wallet and thrust a wad of French francs into my hand. He said, ‘I seem to have more than I need, Brady. You’d better have some.’ There were eighty francs altogether! So I thanked him, and he said, ‘I expect we’ll be called early tomorrow, Brady. I’d like a drink of something if you can manage it.’ I said, ‘All right, Sir, I’ll see you get a cuppa.’ I felt distinctly miserable as I made my way back along the dark passage.
That would be about midnight, and most of the others were sleeping. I clambered up into my bunk, which had a headroom of barely two feet. Upstairs everything seemed quiet – a good deal too quiet!
Tom Witherow and his companions were strolling back to their quarters after an excellent evening spent in convivial company. The food in the mess at Caix was a considerable improvement on the indifferent fare they were forced to endure at the front, and after dinner they had gone to a concert, which they all agreed had been first class. There was a good deal of talent among the Army troops based there, and Witherow had especially enjoyed musical selections given by a section of the excellent band. The platoon commanders’ course had begun well and was an interesting change from the platoon officer’s usual occupation of dodging bullets in the line, or supervising a dozen or so reluctant navvies constructing defences behind it.
It was a clear starry night, and it promised to be a fine day tomorrow. As he undressed in his hut and hung up his smart new tunic, Witherow was looking forward to it.
Fifty miles to the west the mist was gathering and thickening across the marshland of the Oise.
Leutnant der Reserve Otto Porath, 271st Field Artillery, 240th [German] Division
All battery officers were summoned to a meeting with the group artillery commander. Being pitch black, it was not a comfortable walk, owing to the many shell-holes everywhere. In the group commander’s dugout we received a large number of written orders, as well as the plans and objectives of our attack. Our watches were synchronized. All of us rushed back to our batteries, because only a short time was left to do a lot of work that night. All targets were mapped on our maps, but there was no time to obtain the correct ranging distances to the various targets. That was a risk we had to accept. We also did not know what the weather would be like in the morning, nor what the temperatures would be. We were through with our calculations at 2 a.m., and my head steamed! At 2.30 all members of the gun-crews were told of what was planned, and everybody knew what types of ammunition to use and what the distances were.
A little time was left to snatch a few winks of sleep. Outside everything was quiet. It was the calm before the storm.
In the assault trenches the forward troops were packed as tight as herrings in a barrel, for the shelters and tunnels had been built to hold less than half as many, and the air was heavy with the stench of sweat and the none too sweet breath of the men squeezed into it. There was no room to stretch out, and barely enough for card-players to squat on the concrete floor for a game of skat or Doppelkopf to pass the time and occupy the mind. But morale was high. An order telephoned through from Eighteenth Army Group had been distributed early in the evening, and senior NCOs were given the job of reading it aloud to their platoons:
After years of defensive action on the Western Front, Germany is moving to the attack; the hour eagerly awaited by every soldier is approaching. I am certain that your regiment, true to its history, will enhance its reputation in the days which lie ahead.
This great objective will call for sacrifices, and we shall bear with them for the Fatherland, and for our loved ones at home.
Then forward, into action! With God for King and Fatherland!
It was well received. But that was not all. Just before the battle started, official word was passed along the line that the Kaiser himself, accompanied by no less a personage than Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, had arrived at the front to direct the battle in person. In Waldemar Schmielau’s dugout this information was greeted with a disrespectful guffaw from Gefreiter Fritze, squatting on the cold floor in a dark damp corner. ‘Ja, ja,’ he quipped, ‘and he’ll be doing it lying in a warm comfortable bed in his nice chateau.’
Four hours later a single white rocket soared into the air above St Quentin and, as if it were a signal for the whole German line, the bombardment began.
More than 6,000 guns took part, and there had never been a bombardment like it. The earth trembled. Even the air shook. The noise numbed the senses.
Musketier Alwin Hitzeroth, Minenwerfer Coy., 463rd Infantry Regt., 238th [German] Division
At exactly 4.40 a.m. the bombardment began – a rumbling, shaking, terrible noise. Some of our guns were firing Blue Cross gas-shells, and the wind brought a gust of gas back into our trenches. A few of the men were overcome as we struggled to get our masks on. For five hours we were forced to sit this way, sweating in our dugout. It was naturally quite unpleasant, but to take off our masks would have meant certain death. I thought about the hellish noise outside and what our guns must be doing to the English over on the other side.
For the British infantry sheltering in dugouts, the clangour of the bombardment in the early stages was partly muffled. The enemy was searching far behind the lines, sending huge projectiles roaring through the night to shatter a crossroads or wipe out wagon lines or camps far in the rear. The gas-shells that whistled past the outpost zone and the high explosives that shook the ground were intended to knock out the guns before the time came for the German assault troops to advance.
At first, in spite of the meticulous German calculations, the shooting was still inaccurate and, although the guns were firing at known battery positions, in many places they were firing short. The British gunners were out in the inferno, firing back in retaliation, half blinded in the suffocating damp of steamy gas-masks, working flat out to feed the guns. The flashes as each shell streaked from the barrel could just be seen in the gloom, and with the boom of each enemy shell another cloud of smoke and dust and gas exploded into the mist, until it lay thick and clammy and airless like a curtain across the night.
The dawn, when it came, was hardly perceptible, but gradually the blackness turned to grey, and gradually too the German guns shortened their range and began to pour shells on the British infantry in the outpost line and the battle zone behind it. There was nothing for the British to do but shelter as best they could, each hoping against hope with the crump of every explosion that the next one would not have his number on it and that Jerry would not be outside waiting when he and his mates emerged from the dugout in the morning.
Captain Geoffrey Lawrence, 1st South African Bn., 9th (Scottish) Division
First a shell blew one door in and then the other near me. The candles went out, and we groped for our gas-helmets in the dark. Splinters of metal were making sparks as they fell through just above us, and the din was quite indescribable. Soon amongst the high-explosive shells falling all around we heard the unmistakable plop, plop as gas-shells fell mixed with the others, and the burnt-potato or onion smell warned us it was time to put on our gas-helmets.
One poor chap couldn’t find his helmet; another had his torn across his face by a flying piece of shrapnel. We waited apprehensively for a direct hit any moment, but luckily none came and the barrage lifted back to the front line and also to the artillery lines. We then all staggered out to find our battle positions, trying as best we could to see through helmet eyepieces and the dense fog.
We were making very slow progress when Sergeant-Major Alex Smith did a very brave thing. He pulled off his gas-helmet, fully aware of the grave risk, and led us through the thick gas to our allotted posts. I was quite aghast at Smith’s selfless act, deliberately inviting a cruel death. We had witnessed it graphically in our reserve line – the terrible sight of gassed men caught by the mixed gas and high-explosive shell-fire. They were carried past on stretchers in what seemed an endless procession, each man frothing at the mouth and blowing bubbles. It was a frightful and unnerving sight.
When we reached the front line our men were holding firm in spite of heavy shelling.
The German bombardment was going as well as General Ludendorff had hoped and Colonel Bruchmüller intended, and very soon now the German infantry would find out if it had done its work. The long-range guns were still blasting the British rear positions, the carefully plotted command posts, the rearward villages where reserves might be assembling, the heavy-gun positions behind the line. Of course they were shooting ‘off the map’, but the maps had been drawn up with painstaking application. Even if the distant targets could not be pinpointed with 100 per cent precision, the crews who served the guns, troops at rest in billets, the unfortunate beasts in the horse lines would be drenched and disabled by gas. For the first two hours of the bombardment the deadly combination of gas and high explosive rained down without a moment’s pause.
In the forward posts and battle zones the infantry also received a share, and, though the gas-shells gradually diminished (the fumes must have time to disperse before German soldiers arrived to take possession of the ground), there was worse to come.
Private Jim Brady
The barrage fell on us like thunder and lightning, causing the dugout to shiver and quake and stout beams to groan under the shock of direct hits and the waves of blast which roared down the stairway.
There was a lot of cursing – which was understandable – and I remember Jock McBarron yelling, ‘Will nobody light a sodding candle?’ Next minute there was a shattering explosion at the dugout entrance, scattering debris and fumes all around. My legs lost their strength; I was trembling. This, I thought, must be my moment of truth I’d heard people talk about but never understood – the moment when, in a time of emergency, one had to make a decision (in this case to condition oneself to the possibility of sudden death – and a messy one at that!), when one had to steel oneself to take the strain or crack. You might say it’s the difference between courage and cowardice – but the reaction has to be instantaneous. I must have opted to survive.
Two hours to the minute after the opening shots, the second stage began and the massed weight of all but the heaviest German guns began to pound the infantry. From the enemy’s standpoint the results were disappointing. The guns that would fire the creeping barrage when the assault troops went across at zero had been dragged up close to the line. The murky gloom that crept imperceptibly out of the night could hardly be described as daylight, and the mist that hung thicker than ever put paid to Bruchmüller’s intention of ranging the field guns squarely on the British trenches and strongpoints in the forward zones. But the guns kept firing anyway.
Private Jim Brady
One thing was quite certain: we were trapped by a ring of flying steel with little or no hope of escape until the barrage lifted. Suddenly a redcap – a military policeman – clattered downstairs with his right hand gushing blood. He said he was looking for battle stragglers, which gave us all a good laugh. I gave him a cup of tea and tied up his shattered hand.
It was quite evident Jerry meant to blow us to smithereens before unleashing his gallant storm troopers on us. My watch showed eight o’clock – by a miracle we had survived the strafe for close on five hours. The point was, How long would it go on and how long would our weakening dugout withstand the strain? It was a thought I didn’t care to dwell on.
Brady made tea all round and, mindful of his promise, took a mug along to Captain Duncan. He also took him a sandwich concocted from fried bread and the last of the streaky bacon in the ration cupboard. It was mostly fat, and the doctor eyed the greasy offering with distaste. ‘Just a cup of tea will suit me, Brady, thanks,’ he said. ‘And if there’s a drop of hot water I’d like a shave before the casualties arrive.’
But, as time went on and the shelling continued, they began to wonder why there was no sign of stretcher-bearers bringing wounded men from the forward aid post on the far side of Essigny, where Joe Beech, Sandy McKay, Tug Wilson and Andy McNab were on duty. Not even walking wounded appeared. They tried in vain to telephone, but the line was cut and there was nothing to do but to go on waiting. They were not to know that a shell had landed squarely on the stretcher post and that the bearers had been blown to bits.
It was a cold, unpleasant dawn, and in the German lines the soldiers who had not been fortunate enough to find a place in the dubious comfort of a shelter pressed themselves into shallow crevices in the walls of the assembly trenches and draped bivouac sheets in front of them, doubled for extra warmth. Their last hot meal had been many hours before, and all they could expect by way of breakfast was a lump of sausage or cooked meat with a piece of black bread washed down by ersatz coffee brought up in canisters several hours before. It was thin stuff at the best of times, and when lukewarm it was worse. Leutnant Hermann Wedekind did better, for his extra water-bottle contained some vintage Burgundy presented to him by the mess steward at the chateau near Pronville where he had been so comfortably lodged. ‘Here you are, Sir,’ he’d said, presenting Wedekind with three fine bottles. ‘I’d rather a soldier had them than the good-for-nothing skulkers who’ll be moving in when you’ve gone.’ It was extremely civil of him, considering that he was a Frenchman, and Wedekind had appreciated the gesture almost as much as the wine. One bottle was a godsend on the long march to the line, and another – sipped discreetly throughout the night – had kept his spirits high and the chill factor reasonably low. The third, now in his spare water-bottle, would provide sustenance in the battle. Crouched flinching beneath the thundering guns, Wedekind was excited rather than fearful. But the relentless vibration gnawed at the nerves and, as the time crawled slowly towards zero, tension mounted all along the line.
The culmination of the five-hour bombardment would be concentrated drumfire on the British front positions, when the massed field guns, and even the short-range trench mortars, would join in the overture to the battle. But, considering the force of the long bombardment, a disconcerting number of heavy British shells were still coming the other way, whistling across the German assembly trenches, and the soldiers had been warned that, for all the thundering of the guns, the British defence would only have been dislocated. It would not have been annihilated. Therefore they must take full advantage of the barrage that would lead them on to the assault, and keep up close behind it ‘regardless of shell splinters’; only thus would the Kaiser’s soldiers be victorious. As their orders had explicitly pointed out, ‘A single enemy machine-gun which survives the bombardment does more harm than any number of our own shell splinters.’ This did not perhaps instil the confidence that the German Staff intended.
The drumfire mounted. The minutes ticked towards zero. Alwin Hitzeroth and his comrades of the Minenwerfer company ducked out of the crowded shelter and ran back to the trench mortars they had left outside. Quickly checking to see that they were still in good order, they hooked them to the poles and belts with which they would carry them forward. The order came almost immediately, and Feldwebel Bandmann roared above the bombardment, ‘Roll assault packs and get ready to attack!’ Knees buckling under the weight, they heaved the poles to their shoulders. They were as thick as tree-trunks, and the whole paraphernalia weighed a sixth of a ton!
Hermann Wedekind had mustered his company, and with five minutes to go they were waiting in the trench. Somewhere on his left someone began to sing their national anthem – ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles …’ It was the voice of Major Scherer, the Battalion Commander. In a moment his adjutant joined in, and then the men who were nearby took up the ragged chorus. It was a reminder that the Kaiser himself was said to have dubbed this venture ‘The Kaiserschlacht’.
Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in die Welt …
Germany before everything! All for Germany! For Emperor and Fatherland. It struck a chord, and, as Wedekind later remembered, it also did a good deal to calm their nerves.
All along the line a thousand officers stood, eyes glued to pocket watches. As the second hand touched zero they gave the order: ‘Protzen heran.’ The bugles sounded, and the Kaiser’s Army scrambled from the safety of the impregnable Hindenburg Line to fight the Kaiser’s Battle.