AFTER THE mayhem came some respite for the 15th Warwicks. Their next stretch in the front line, from 11 to 17 June, was mercifully quiet, although Captain Bengough was taken ill and hospitalised. The battalion spent the last two weeks of the month out of the firing line, billeted in huts and ruined houses back in Agnez-les-Duisans. There was a lull in the fighting on the Arras front but the frequent buzzing of reconnaissance aircraft overhead suggested something big was brewing. There was much speculation that a major offensive was planned on the Somme front. That offensive arrived on 1 July and was a catastrophic failure.
The Germans had long expected it and planned for it. For seven days, around 1.6 million shells had battered the German lines while British tunnellers made their way under No Man’s Land to lay mines. Two minutes before zero hour – 7.30am on 1 July – the mines were blown. In the minds of the architects of this offensive, the infantry would then simply stroll over No Man’s Land and seize the positions of the devastated enemy. The reality was hideously different.
The Germans had dug in so deep they were able to withstand the onslaught. They weathered the bombardment and waited patiently for it to end in the knowledge that they were well-prepared to meet the raid that was certain to follow.
At 7.30am on a sunny Saturday, along a 15-mile section of the Western Front, whistles blew and 66,000 British soldiers climbed from the trenches and began to walk towards the enemy. Within seconds they were met by a blizzard of bullets. Within minutes, thousands of families, oblivious to the catastrophe unfolding miles away across the English Channel, lost husbands, fathers, brothers and sons. Within hours, 20,000 soldiers lay dead and another 40,000 were wounded. The attack was a military blunder of unprecedented and monumental human cost.
The colossal loss of life sent a massive knock-on effect rippling through the British Army across France. Many more men had to be poured into the conflict and on 2 July a runner arrived at Agnez-les-Duisans with orders for the 15th Warwicks. Remote from the carnage of 1 July (C Coy spent the day on fatigue work – “casualties nil … weather fair” noted the battalion diary) they were now destined for the Somme. And their movements towards it over the subsequent three weeks perfectly encapsulate the chaotic leadership of these men and the insane demands made of them.
At 3.30am on 3 July, the 15th Warwicks arrived at Sars-lez-Bois. Accommodation was very limited and many men slept out in the rain. On 6 July, they marched to Moncheaux where they remained for six days, under orders to be ready to move at eight hours’ notice. During their time at Moncheaux, on Tuesday 11 July, the men took advantage of some sunshine to play sport. It is highly likely that here, trench foot permitting, Percy Jeeves played his last game of cricket.
The simple joy of playing sport was soon a distant memory as the men were sent upon a crazy catalogue of marches. Early in the evening of 13 July, the vast crocodile (the battalion transport alone occupied three miles of road) set off on a 15-mile yomp. Next day, they moved 18 miles and, next, another eight. On 17 July they covered another seven to Dernancourt where they remained to await orders. When, two days later, those orders arrived, they sent Major Bill and his men to a place which, even amidst the hell-hole of the Western Front, evoked particular dread – High Wood.
They moved up to the Bazentin Ridge and occupied some recently-captured German trenches at Montauban. Visible from there was High Wood, its dense, dark green expanse appearing, from a distance, curiously undamaged amid all the surrounding devastation. It was an illusion. Within the tight phalanx of trees, scorched paths snaked through charred undergrowth littered with the debris of battle. For days, the area had been ravaged by fierce fighting.
The 75-acre, diamond-shaped wood was of huge strategic importance. Its lofted position supplied the best vantage point for miles and the Germans were dug in deep there despite strenuous and repeated attacks by the British. As a result of those failed attempts, much of the land sloping up to the trees was littered with corpses and the air thick with their stench. One cornfield, near the wood’s southern corner, was a “field in name only, cratered as it was beyond belief and literally spread with human flotsam that dated back to the July 14th engagements”, wrote Terry Norman in The Hell They Called High Wood. “It was, in essence, a vast graveyard with the majority of its occupants exposed to the elements.” In the heat of summer, the soldiers’ discomfort was increased by a profusion of flies and rats.
When the 15th Warwicks arrived in Montauban, the Allies had just missed an opportunity to seize High Wood. Five days earlier, a group of British officers walked up the slopes towards the wood without detection by the enemy. The Germans, off-guard, appeared vulnerable but commanding officer General Sir Henry Rawlinson decided the raid would be too difficult for infantry alone so called for cavalry reinforcements. While the cavalry were coming, the German defences in High Wood were fortified so that when the horsemen arrived and were quickly sent in (the first ever deployment of cavalry in trench warfare) they perished en masse.
Horses and men were slain by a lethal double onslaught of shells launched from Flers, a mile and a half to the north-east, and close-up crossfire from rifle and machine-gunners positioned in two trenches newly-dug nearby. The gunners in those trenches – the Switch Line and Wood Lane – enjoyed perfect firing positions as their presence was almost imperceptible among the land’s undulations and further masked by the growing corn and poppies.
The British cavalry and infantry advanced oblivious to this threat. Aerial photographs would have been immensely useful to the attacking force but, though photos taken from reconnaissance aircraft did exist, they were supplied to staff only, back behind the lines, and rarely circulated at battalion level. It was a disastrous night and triggered weeks of futile bloodshed in that tiny corner of the conflict.
Six months earlier, this part of the line was considered cushy. Now it was in the thick of it and, despite appalling losses already, Rawlinson was determined to persist with his quest for High Wood. On 18 July, orders were issued for another major assault to be launched.
Percy Jeeves and his comrades spent the evening of 18 July at Dernancourt. An ominous clue as to what lay ahead of them came from the stream of ambulances which passed through the village all night. Next day they marched up to the line, past the rubble of Fricourt. In his book published 16 years later, Major Bill’s recollections were as precise as they were harrowing.
“We moved up Caterpillar Valley to support trenches at its eastern end,” he wrote, “Montauban lying to the south of us and Bazentin-le-Grand to the north. The road running up the valley was the main line of communication hereabouts and it was a most unhealthy area. It was packed from end to end with guns of every sort, 9.2 inch, eight-inch, six-inch, 4.5 howitzers, 60-pounders and anti-aircraft guns and literally hundreds of 18-pounder guns, which kept up an almost continuous roar day and night.
“Overlooked by the German positions at Ginchy to the east, it was the target of much artillery fire. There was hardly any cover for the detachments, only holes dug in the ground covered with corrugated iron and earth, which afforded little protection against the Caterpillar Valley barrage which swept relentlessly down the valley at intervals during the day and night.
“Sleep that night was impossible. Shelling was continuous, but far worse was the bark of a 60-pounder battery firing directly over our heads from a position about 30 yards behind us. The ear-splitting crack was terrific and we were so close that we felt the blast every time it fired. That went on right through the night.
“The next day the battalion came in for a little shelling, losing Second-Lieutenant W.R. Pratt (A Coy) and nine Other Ranks all wounded. In the morning we sat tight and watched the slaughter going on in Caterpillar Valley just below us. Guns, ammunition wagons, ration wagons, infantry marching up, wounded walking or being carried down – the road held a continual stream of traffic, with the German guns searching for it. At the cross-roads a quarry was being used as a dressing station. I saw one large shell drop right into it and a dozen or so men came running out but from the number of casualties continually being passed in and out that one shell must have done a lot of damage.”
On 20 July alone, in that tiny corner of the Western Front, the 20th Royal Fusiliers sustained 397 casualties, the 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers suffered 249, the 5th/6th Scots Rifles 407 and the 1st Cameronians 382.
Among the men watching all this slaughter described by Major Bill was Private 611 Jeeves.
The young man who had once watched his fellow Goole Grasshoppers eating, drinking and laughing on the village green at Luddington and played country-house cricket at Hawes and watched Frank Foster and Jack Hobbs test each other’s skills at a great theatre of cricket, peered in disbelief at the atrocities unfolding before him in one tiny theatre of a monstrous war.