#1341 Corporal James Edward Hodgson
1/9TH DURHAM LIGHT INFANTRY
BACK TO THE EAST OF Le Sars, Rawlinson’s men were still facing the Butte de Warlencourt. No attack had taken place since John MacDonald and David Blacklaw were killed in mid-October, but on the 30th it was ordained that, whenever the weather permitted another assault, the Butte should be seized from the enemy, part of a series of smaller scale attacks still being sanctioned on the Fourth Army front. At the beginning of November, it just so happened that the men of the Northumbrian Division would be to hand to carry out these orders.
From Whickham, County Durham, James Hodgson was working as a miner for the Priestman Colliery Company at the outbreak of war. As a 17 year old, he had also joined a territorial battalion of the Durham Light Infantry and so when the declaration came, he was ordered to report to Gateshead immediately. Since arriving at the front, James had been wounded in the head by a shell fragment, but his lengthy time away had mostly been due to horrific dental problems that had seen him hospitalised at the front throughout 1915 and 1916. He had rejoined his unit for good in May and had since been twice promoted.
After a few torrid days of cleaning out trenches next to Mametz Wood, as night fell on 3rd November, James marched off with his company to take over the front line just to the south of the Butte from a battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. It was an uncomfortable position. ‘The front line … was very irregular, [one] trench … zig-zagged a good deal.’ Communication trenches to the rear were incomplete and dubious looking lines shot off in all different directions and joined up to other random trenches running all over the place.
On the 4th, James and his companions made the last preparations for the following day’s attack, with the Butte looming in the distance, visible from wherever they went in the front line. Officers studied the ground through their binoculars and observed the enemy’s trenches as best they could. The little figures flitting about in front of them were identified as Saxons. The heavy artillery were busy with practice barrages, conducting two separate rehearsals and even having the front line cleared temporarily mid-morning while they bombarded two positions close by that ran right up to the Butte itself. The Germans clearly knew something was afoot. James and his company spent a restless night awaiting their attack the following morning as twice the enemy put heavy barrages on them. Their misery was compounded by yet another downpour, rendering the night ‘a horror. Heavy rain fell and a gale of wind howled about the trenches.’ The assault on the Butte was not called off. ‘Staggering under their equipment and usual heavy loads, the troops detailed for the attack floundered through mud and water to their assembly positions.’ It was remarkable that the likes of James were even able to reach their starting points. ‘In some parts of the line the mud was now thigh deep; it is impossible to describe the physical and mental agony of waiting hours on end, drenched through, caked with dirt, shivering with cold and with clothes rain-sodden for zero hour.’ There were rumours that men in the next battalion along had even drowned on their way up. Somehow, James’ company was in position by 6am on 5th November. The rain had finally stopped, but in exchange, the wind across the battlefield had whipped up into a gale that chilled the soaking wet men as they awaited zero hour. Three companies were to attack in waves, formed up into columns and paced 30 yards apart.
At 9:10am they advanced, in a manner of speaking. ‘Crawl is an apt description, for the greatest difficulty was experienced in getting over the top owing to deep mud. The men who were first out pulled and dragged their comrades over the parapet.’ As the artillery bludgeoned the German trenches that they were approaching, all the way up to the Butte and an adjacent quarry, James fought the fierce wind to get across no-man’s-land. It was cold and wet, the mud ‘sticky and plentiful’. No-man’s-land was a morass, cloying and pervasive, ‘a death trap for advancing troops … [a] ghastly waste’.
Somehow James and his cohorts broke through two lines of German trenches, reached the Butte and established a post past it, on the Bapaume Road. By 9:40am the Durham Light Infantry was reporting that the trench in front of the Butte had been taken without much resistance. ’Independent witnesses stated that our assault was very finely carried out and that our men could be seen advancing very steadily.’ Telephone lines were set up back to headquarters, and they held; some of the men had even got into the trenches that protected Warlencourt beyond the Butte, laying out discs as indicators for the artillery. Unfortunately, it was a very different story for other battalions of the regiment attacking next to them. Almost to a man, they were held up by machine-gun fire before they could reach the German front line.
The Butte de Warlencourt looms over the battlefield. (Authors’ collection)
The enemy was not about to settle for being thrown off of the Butte de Warlencourt. Although at first their barrage came on slowly, British rear positions were then heavily shelled. German infantry began by delivering determined little counter-attacks on the Durham troops who had got furthest forward, although for now they managed to repulse them. On the north side of the Butte, a fortified dugout still held out, refusing to fully cede the high ground to the Durham advance. Fierce fighting went on at close quarters as James’ regiment tried to seize this last stronghold.
In the middle of the afternoon, the enemy organised themselves sufficiently to deliver a strongly reinforced counter-attack. Hauling themselves through the mud, they pushed the Durham men back south of the Bapaume Road and into the trench that ran around the front of the Butte. Desperately, requests went back to the artillery to shell the northern side of the road to try and break up the determined German force. Isolated men still held posts around the Butte, cowering in shell holes. The situation deteriorated into scrappy fighting which went on all day: hand-to-hand, with bomb and bayonet. Desperately, James’ battalion was trying to establish forward posts and dig a new communication trench back to its original positions to ease the path of reinforcements and equipment, but the Germans would not budge.
At 7:15pm another enemy counter-attack came bursting out of their trenches in front of Warlencourt and from the stronghold on the northern slopes of the Butte, enemy troops flinging bombs into the Durham lines. ‘The enemy was in great strength. This attack was perfectly organised and was [pushed] with great energy and determination.’ The line was faltering. At 10pm the Durham men still clung to a position next to the Butte, but it was not to last. ‘Our men resisted heroically, but after a desperate stand they were driven back.’ At midnight they were overrun a last time and found themselves falling back, leaving the ground that had been traversed littered with bodies. The remnants of James’ battalion were right back where they had started, although the fact that they had got as far as they had in such disgusting conditions was a miracle in itself. Casualties were horrific; almost 1,000 in James Hodgson’s brigade alone, and they were not the only Durham battalions that had been sent forward. Several battalions of the regiment had been decimated.
James was reported wounded on 5th November 1916. A fellow soldier claimed that he had seen him hit, but he was never retrieved from the battlefield by stretcher-bearers, nor did he manage to get himself to a dressing station. He lost his life as part of a limited attack that would have made negligible difference to the outcome of the campaign on the Somme. His family were finally notified that he had been officially accepted as killed in June 1917. James had received a burial on the field of battle, a crude wooden cross marking the spot. The 21 year old was exhumed in 1920 and reinterred during a concentration of isolated graves in the area. James Hodgson was finally laid to rest at Warlencourt British Cemetery, plot VII.K.46.
An example of autumn mud on the Somme. (Australian National War Memorial)