With the coming of darkness No Man’s Land became alive, as thousands of British soldiers decided that it was safe to move. The men limped, crawled and felt their way over ground which had been green and level at dawn but was now a mass of shell craters, littered with discarded equipment and dead bodies. ‘I kept falling into shell holes which had men in them but, when I tried to get them to come in with me, I found they were all dead. Sometimes there were eight or nine in one hole.’ (Pte A. Fretwell, Sheffield City Battalion)
One of the fugitives was Bugler Bill Soar. Although he was injured in the arm he managed to reach his own barbed wire easily enough but there a burst of machine-gun bullets, passing just above his head, forced him flat to the ground. A nervous sentry was challenging all comers in this fashion and Soar had to identify himself before he was told to come in. Then he got caught in the barbed wire and only freed himself by abandoning his trousers. He had already lost his rifle, helmet and all his equipment, and returned to his lines in just his tunic. His wound was not serious and he walked back to a Dressing Station.
The Glasgow Boys’ Brigade sergeant, who had fired twenty-four drums of Lewis gun ammunition while he had been in No Man’s Land, came in at dusk, asked for more ammunition and declared his intention of resuming his private battle in the morning. He was ordered to go to the rear and rejoin his battalion.
For those who had been pinned down close to the German trenches, escape to their own lines was not always possible; as it became dark the Germans left their trenches and rounded up prisoners before the British could get away. ‘Four of us decided to wait until it was completely dark, so that we could make a run for it, but the Germans were soon all around us and stick grenades started coming at us. We decided it was hopeless and stood up to surrender. This action did not deter about twenty Germans from making a lunatic charge at us with fixed bayonets. A split second before connecting my stomach with a bayonet, at which I nearly passed out in terror, a terrific shout of “Halt!” came from somewhere and, showing how disciplined the German soldier is, the one coming at me slid flat on his back, his rifle went straight up in the air and his legs shot between mine.’ (L/Cpl T. R. Short, 1st London Rifle Brigade)
‘I lay by the German wire from about 7.45 A.M. till after nightfall, receiving a shrapnel wound in the foot and a bullet wound in the hand during the course of the day. When darkness fell, the Germans threw volleys of hand grenades into the wire and then came out to pick up the pieces. I was carried into the German front-line trench and taken down into a dug-out where I was searched and my wound dressed.’ (2nd Lieut J. W. Stansby, 1/6th North Staffs)*
Pte Albert McMillan had been very close to the German trenches and would have liked to escape but, at dusk, a sergeant-major from his own battalion told McMillan and others nearby that the Germans had them covered and ordered them to put down their rifles, take off all their equipment and surrender. German soldiers then came out and rounded them up. McMillan noticed that their rifles were fitted with telescopic sights and that they wore metal breast plates on which were painted red crosses. He wondered whether the cross was a regimental insignia or a trick to avoid being fired at; it was probably the Landwehr Cross, a symbol worn by Reserve and other units. His captors were men of the 119th Reserve Regiment.
One of the Middlesex men, who had been badly wounded in the groin, was being passed down carefully into the enemy trench, when a watching German jeered, ‘Nicht mehr Kinder machen’ (‘No more children for you’). Albert McMillan found that his steel helmet was scored in several places where German bullets had struck it. One bullet had even pierced it and grazed his scalp. Pte Albert McMillan’s active participation in the Great War had ended in less than twenty-four hours.
Back in No Man’s Land some of the British soldiers could not, or dared not, move. The severely wounded had to stay where they were and hope for help. Already stretcher-bearers were out looking for them, but it would be a long job. Everything was against the searchers – their own barbed wire, the torn-up ground, the difficulty of distinguishing dead from wounded in the dark, the firing which occasionally broke out and the very number of the wounded. There was not much more than six hours of darkness on this night and many could not be reached before daylight stopped the work. For some, help would come too late and they would die, alone, unconscious or in agony.
Where they had captured the German trenches, the British soldiers settled down for the night. They were weary but braced by their first taste of success: ‘We got a ration of rum, which may have been slightly larger than usual owing to there being several casualties. We were, nevertheless, quite sober but feeling very pleased with ourselves at having taken our objective. We were so pleased with this and the fact that so many of us were still alive that we started singing some of these war-time songs, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” and “Keep the Home Fires Burning”.’ (Pte R. G. Robertson, 4th Liverpool Pals)
Some battalions, in taking their objectives, had suffered heavily and sent for reinforcements from the men they had left behind in reserve. Near Fricourt, a tall, thin lieutenant, shown in the battalion diary as B. H. L. Hart, led a party of the 9th K.O.Y.L.I, up into the captured trenches. Every officer in this battalion and its sister battalion near by, the 10th K.O.Y.L.I., had become a casualty and Lieut Hart had to reorganize the remnants of both. What he saw that evening and later on the Somme left a lasting impression on the young officer who, as Basil Liddell Hart, became a leading military thinker and a critic of British military policy. But papers written by him in September 1916 show that he still admired his leaders then. This transformation, from enthusiastic infantry officer to bitter critic, is typical of the way many soldiers changed their views over the years.
Many of the smaller groups of men had been sent back from the Quadrilateral to the British lines but C.S.M.Percy Chap-pell’s force of Somersets still formed part of its garrison. By nightfall, Chappell and his men were extremely hungry, so he selected two well-known scroungers and ordered them to search the German dug-outs for food. The foragers soon returned with a haul of dark bread, cold stew, cigars and, surprisingly, several tins of British bully beef. The bread and stew were left untouched as it was feared that the Germans might have poisoned them. There was much speculation as to the source of the bully beef; the Germans must have raided the trenches of a British battalion and made off with their rations. The Somersets dined on bully beef and water, and followed their meal with German cigars.
The following incident illustrates how precarious the position of the men in the Quadrilateral was. Under cover of the dark, a company of the 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers had crossed to the redoubt as reinforcements. During the night one of their sergeants was searching for wounded men, when he heard German voices. The sergeant threw a grenade in the direction of the voices, and either killed or drove off the Germans. He found they had been erecting two machine-guns which, in the morning, could have fired straight into the British-held part of the redoubt. He toppled one gun into a deep shell hole and called for help to bring back the other and deliver it to his officer.
Back in the British trenches, the breakdown of organization on some sectors was complete; few plans had been made for such a complete failure. Three groups of men should have been on the move: the wounded being evacuated, those involved in the attack being relieved, and fresh troops taking over the front line. The trenches themselves had been badly battered by shell fire and the movement of troops from different units, with conflicting duties, was adding to the congestion and hampering the clearance of the dead and wounded.
The suffering of the wounded was grievous. There were so many seriously hurt mixed among the dead bodies that, in the darkness, some were even trampled to death or pressed into the mud and choked in the slime. On the worst sectors the stretcher-bearers were so overwhelmed that badly wounded men had little chance of rescue. ‘That night a captain begged me to shoot him as he was so badly hurt, but I couldn’t. I went back next morning and he had died in the night.’ (Pte A. Morrison, East Belfast Volunteers) Again, ‘I was sent back from the Quadrilateral but, when I got back to our trenches, an officer’s servant stopped me coming in. His lieutenant was dying and the soldier was straining to catch his last words. I heard the officer giving instructions for a watch to be sent back to his family. Then he died and I was allowed to come in.’ (Pte E. C. Stanley, 1/8th Royal Warwicks)
It was feared that the Germans might take advantage of the confusion and attack during the night. Certainly, there would have been little to stop them taking the British trenches, had they wished to do so. One brigade reported that its front line was manned by only twenty-five men. The nearest unit, in this case a Pioneer battalion, was rushed up to man the line.
Those men who had been in the attack were sometimes allowed to retire. ‘We were told that if we could clear the trench of dead and wounded sufficiently, we would be relieved. We propped the dead in rows at the back of the trench and sat the wounded on the fire-step and we waited to be relieved. There were three of us left in my platoon.’ (Pte G. S. Young, 1/6th North Staffs)
The British trenches opposite Serre were being held by a company from a Hull battalion that had not been in the attack but, as they had been holding the trenches for over a week and had been shelled all day, were very tired. The company commander decided to concentrate his men in the reserve trench but wanted eight volunteers to man a post in the front line and fire a warning rocket if the Germans attacked. ‘To a man we had frightful headaches and had had so much concussion that we were all suffering from varying degrees of shell shock. We stood there in stony silence, which was finally broken by a shell bursting just outside the trench and a piece of shrapnel knocking off the tin hat of the man standing next to me. The captain then said that he was left with the unpleasant task of detailing someone for such a mission and, as bombers were best suited for these isolated posts, he detailed my bombing team.
‘And so, at dusk, we moved down the remnants of the trench to the front line. The last hundred yards was solid with men killed whilst waiting to go over. It was impossible to do other than walk on these bodies and I finally reached a man on a stretcher, with a bearer lying dead at each end. I raised my foot to place it on the chest of the man on the stretcher, when, to my amazement, he popped his head up and said quietly, “Mind my leg, chum”, and then just laid back again.
‘Reaching the front line we had a job to find a habitable bit of trench, but we got our rockets fixed and sentries posted and then set out to spend the longest night of our lives.’ (Pte W. E. Aust, Hull Commercials)
As orders that they were to be relieved reached them, the battalions prepared to leave the trenches from which they had attacked with such enthusiasm that morning. It was a pitiful spectacle; a few dozen exhausted, dirty men were sometimes all that were left. Many had lost their rifles and equipment, or wore blood-stained field dressings. Quietly, they were called together by an officer or N.C.O., and led to the rear. An artillery officer witnessed the departure of Lieut-Col. Sandys’ battalion: ‘In the evening fresh troops took over the line and I watched the 2nd Middlesex, to which I had been attached as Forward Observation Officer, march away. There was one officer and twenty-eight men, all that remained of a very gallant battalion.’ (Lieut F. L. Lee, 33rd Brigade R.F.A.)
The ten per cent reserve of officers and men which had been left behind was often called forward to help with the reorganization of the battalions. These meetings were tense occasions. On one side, the shabby survivors; on the other, the fresh, smart soldiers who had escaped the holocaust. There was a gulf between the two parties which would take time to bridge.
Lieut Philip Howe had been to his brigade H.Q. and reported all he knew of the fate of his battalion. When he had sent the wounded off to be treated, the 10th West Yorks consisted of himself and twenty men. The reserve joined them and another officer, senior to Howe, took charge. Philip Howe was very angry. He had come to regard himself as the acting battalion commander, even though his battalion had been less than a platoon strong. The other officer was not one of the original members who had formed the battalion in 1914 and he had not been in the attack. Howe’s tired, unreasonable mind resented this man taking away his command, but soon exhaustion overtook him and he slept.*
The Ulstermen returned from the hell of Thiepval. ‘Our C.Q.M.S. had promised champagne to those who came back; sure enough when I got back the champagne was there. Every now and then another straggler came in and we got talking about those who had been hit. Many of us broke down and started howling, but some were ready to go back next day and look for the wounded. One man in particular, a fat man called Hamilton, was ready to go, but we had to laugh because his rifle had been hit and was twisted like a corkscrew and he didn’t know it.’ (L/Cpl J. A. Henderson, Belfast Young Citizens)
‘We stayed up during that night to wait for the battalion to come in. They straggled in. First there would be a man on his own and then, maybe a couple, one helping another who was exhausted. I vividly remember some of them screaming and demented with shell shock. They had obviously had the shock of their lives. None of the chaps in my draft, who had trained with me and who had only just joined the battalion, came back. My shorthand had saved me.’ (Pte T. A. Senior, 9th Yorks and Lanes)
Many men had become separated from their battalions and were lost in the dark. ‘I tried to find the others but I had to give up. I went down into a dug-out in Observation Wood and slept there. When I woke up in the morning, I found that the only other occupant was a dead machine-gun officer.’ (Pte A. Fretwell, Sheffield City Battalion)
In the North Midland Division, so few men had returned from the attacking battalions, that senior officers refused to believe that the remainder had all been lost. ‘We battalion scouts were sent for by the c.o. and he asked for volunteers to go out into No Man’s Land to find out what had happened to the rest of the 1/7th. He hinted that the highest possible award might go to anyone who could find Colonel Hind. I set off with other volunteers but, when we got to the front line, another officer stopped us going out.’ (L/Cpl H. Hick-man, 1/8th Sherwood Foresters)
A report was received that some of the Foresters were still holding out in the German trenches and a fresh battalion, the 1/5th Lincolns, was ordered to find and relieve the trapped men. This move, by one company of the Lincolns, was hastily organized. It was dark; the men did not know their exact position, the aim of the attack or the identity of nearby troops, but were simply ordered to attack the German front line. One platoon deployed in the open but were facing the wrong way. A sergeant, their acting platoon commander, turned them in approximately the correct direction but refused to move off until he had been given more precise information. Even when warned that this might be interpreted as mutiny, the sergeant stood firm, insisting that the absence of clear orders did not give his men a chance; the platoon never did advance.*
At midnight two platoons reached the German wire but they were caught by the light of flares and came under heavy fire. It was obvious that there were no longer any Foresters holding out in the German trenches and the Lincolns were ordered back. They withdrew in good order, but forty-eight of their men had been killed or wounded. This incident, on the extreme left of the battlefield at Gommecourt, was the last action of the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
Some 21,000 soldiers, representing the cream of the manhood of Great Britain, Ireland and the colony of Newfoundland, had been killed or would die as a result of their wounds. Over 35,000 more had been wounded and nearly 600 were prisoners of war.
At midnight, Lieut-Col. Reginald Bastard was in the process of handing over his trenches to a relieving battalion; all but one of his officers and two thirds of his men were casualties. Lieut Philip Howe and twenty survivors of the 10th West Yorks were asleep in a field. Lieut Henry Webber’s battalion was in the outskirts of Albert, but had not been touched by the battle.
Paddy Kennedy was playing with his kitten in a captured German trench, thinking that the war was nearly won. Sergeant Major Percy Chappell was in a captured German redoubt, but surrounded by enemies.
L/Cpl Charles Matthews and Bugler Bill Soar were in Dressing Stations. Matthews was drowsy from the morphia that he had been given to ease the pain of his crushed knee but Soar only had a flesh wound in the arm.
Albert McMillan was in German hands after his first and last day of war.
Dick King and Billy McFadzean were dead, lost to their families and to their country.