Everything went more or less calmly till 9.30am when our own guns spotted us in our waterproof sheets, as it was still raining, from the opposite side of the river, and thinking we were Germans, started shelling us with lyddite.
Lieutenant Lionel Tennyson – diary entry 13 September, 1914.
11 Infantry Brigade’s march to the Aisne on 12 September began later than anyone had expected. Breakfast had been eaten at 2.15am and although the initial orders had been for a 3.30am start, the four infantry battalions did not begin their march for another four hours. Movement along the congested roads was not made any easier by the advance units of two Royal Engineers field companies bustling past them with their bridging equipment and by the time the 1st Battalion Somerset Light Infantry (1/SLI) halted at Montreboeuf Farm at mid-day most of the battalion felt they had already put in a good day’s march.
The Somersets had begun their day with the loss of their battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Swayne. Gazetted second lieutenant in 1885, Swayne had commanded the battalion from 1913. Disembarking at Le Havre on 22 August he and his battalion had joined the BEF in time to take part in General Smith-Dorrien’s stand behind the N43 Le Cateau – Cambrai road. The rigours of the subsequent retreat had clearly taken their toll on the 50-year-old Swayne and his departure on sick leave left Major Charles Prowse in command. The 45-year-old Prowse was an ideal replacement, but unlike his former Commanding Officer, he would not survive the war.
Commanding 11 Infantry Brigade was Brigadier General Aylmer Hunter-Weston. An interesting and somewhat unpredictable individual, he had been commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1884, and had served in South Africa on the staff and later in command of a unit of mounted engineers. Described as having ‘reckless courage combined with technical skill and great coolness in emergency’, the 11 Brigade commander – universally known as ‘Hunter-Bunter’ by the men – was more usually seen on the back of a motorcycle which appeared to be his preferred seat of command.58
Whether George Pattenden ever saw his brigade commander on his motorcycle is not disclosed in his diary but he had good cause to remember 12 September, noting rather despondently that they ‘marched all day passing through several villages’, to arrive at Septmonts at about 5.00pm where he hoped the battalion might have a rest and find something to eat. A rest they were able to take but the expectation of obtaining food was short-lived and before long the exhausted battalions were again on the move, this time heading for Vénizel with the additional weight of another 100 rounds of .303 ammunition per man. Pattenden may well have still been ‘in the dark’ as to their destination but Lieutenant Gerald Whittuck of the Somersets had a much clearer picture as he approached the Aisne valley. ‘Germans were evidently close in front of us as the inhabitants informed us that they had only passed through in the morning’. For Whittuck it was looking more and more likely that they would attempt the crossing of the river that night – an exercise he viewed with some apprehension. The young lieutenant was in temporary command of B Company, his diary recording that they had ‘three quarters of an hour’s halt in the middle of the day, but otherwise were marching all day’. Concerned that, ‘many of the men were suffering with diarrhoea’, he was relieved to reach Vénizel about 8.00pm that evening, rather proudly recording, ‘they stuck to the march wonderfully’.
Lieutenant the Honourable Lionel Tennyson, the Hampshire and England cricketer and grandson of the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, was on the 11 Brigade staff. He too had memories of the march to Vénizel: ‘after an awful march of 27 miles still in torrents of rain to the village of Rozierés, we were ordered to advance once more just as we got ready to billet for the night, and arrived after yet another drenching at Vénizel’. Any thoughts Tennyson may have had of crossing the Aisne the next morning were dashed by orders for the whole brigade to cross the damaged bridge immediately and move onto the high ground above Bucy-le Long:
‘The whole of 11th Brigade crossed the river. This was the manner of their crossing, which at the time seemed to us the riskiest and most slap-dash proceeding ever … In the midst of the inky darkness, and although the men were so tired with their march in the rain that they went to sleep as they stood or marched, they crossed the girder one by one. It was sixty feet above the river and quivered and shook all the time.’59
As advance guard, 1/Hampshire was the first battalion to cross the Vénizel Bridge, unfortunately without Private George Pattenden whose feet had once again refused to support him. The Hampshires were closely followed by the 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade (1/Rifle Brigade) and the stretcher bearers from 10/Field Ambulance who reached the bridge at 11.00pm and completed their crossing in thirty minutes. Following the Rifle Brigade were the 1st Battalion East Lancashire Regiment (1/East Lancs) and Gerald Whittuck and the Somersets who, ‘crossed the Aisne just before light … It was nervous work and took a long time as we could only go in single file’. The men, according to the 1/SLI war diary, were tired and grumpy, but no mention was made of any opposition, presumably the German rearguard had long since retired beyond Bucy-le-Long.
Hunter-Weston’s own account of the night’s operations describes the small-arms ammunition carts being unloaded and their contents being passed over the girder by hand. Written sometime after the event, and in a rather self-congratulatory tone, his four-page report to the 4th Division does highlight what can be achieved in the face of adversity.
At Vénizel the river forms a wide loop which passes under the steep southern edge of the valley allowing flat, open water meadows to stretch for over a mile to the foot of the high ground. Across this open ground a single road – the present day N95 – ran from the bridge to Bucy-le-Long, a road which was very much exposed to enemy observation and one which in the coming days would become almost impossible to negotiate safely in daylight. Above Bucy-le-Long the high ground took the form of three spurs where it was expected the enemy rearguard would be positioned.
Hunter-Weston’s judgement of the potentially dangerous and exposed nature of the Bucy-le-Long road was apparent in his report:
‘In order to hold the crossing of the river at Vénizel effectively it was in the opinion of the brigadier necessary to hold the heights above Bucy-le-Long which dominated the bridge and the flat ground between those heights and the river. He therefore ordered the brigade to advance to the attack of those heights and to seize them at the point of the bayonet. The leading battalion, the 1st Hants, were ordered to take the central spur on which is La Montagne Farm. The Somersets were ordered to the left spur, NW of Bucy and the Rifle Brigade the right spur north of Ste Marguerite. The E Lancs being kept in reserve south of the centre of Bucy-le-Long.’60