The shrapnel we don’t care a damn about, but this other brute seems to forge its way through anything making a deafening explosion with a sort of black yellow cloud.
Major Bernard Gordon Lennox – describing the effects of a ‘Jack Johnson’
The heavy British casualties sustained on 14 September 1914 may be regarded as the brutal backwash to the wave of optimism which had been expressed in GHQ Operational Order No.24 the previous day. On 15 September Douglas Haig and William Pulteney were ordered to consolidate their positions but Smith-Dorrien was instructed to continue the attack with his II Corps. In reality the two divisions of II Corps were in no position to maintain their attack on 15 September, particularly in light of the lack of effective artillery support which had been a feature of the previous day’s offensive; in fact it wasn’t until 19 September that any replacements for the 18-pounder artillery pieces lost at Le Cateau began to arrive. On 14 September the 3rd Division had only just managed to stem a German counter attack and Fergusson’s 5th Division had made very little headway on the Chivres spur. The complete lack of progress by Fergusson’s division on 15 September together with the withering barrage of shell fire which descended on the whole BEF frontage, finally convinced a wavering Sir John French that the German retreat was over. Operational Order No.26, issued by GHQ at 8.30pm on 15 September, effectively signalled the beginning of positional warfare on the Aisne.
On either flank of the BEF the French armies has reached similar conclusions. German reinforcements had successfully seen off any ambitions the French armies may have had of breaking through. On 14 September the French XVIII Corps under General de Mas-Latrie had lost Craonne and Craonnelle and to the west Boëlle’s IV Corps had failed to turn the flank of von Kluck’s First Army at Nampcel. Whilst deadlock looked almost certain it was vital to hold the Germans on the Aisne if the possibility of turning their flank west of the Oise was to become reality. As one might expect, such a move had not by-passed German thinking at OHL. Eric von Falkenhayn, who had succeeded von Moltke on 15 September 1914 as Chief of the German General Staff, was only too aware that the German right flank was, ‘in the air’ and without any appreciable reserves behind it. With a strategy that, to a certain extent, mirrored that of the French and British, he ordered a series of strong counter attacks along the Aisne front to the west and east of Reims in order to hold the Allied armies and to allow German units to be moved to the west. These attacks fell largely on the British sector.
It should be said, however, that the perception of ‘permanence’ which characterized the trench warfare of later years was far from present in the minds of the men who now hastily dug their trenches on the Aisne. For those serving along the British line the prospect of an advance to victory was always at the back of their minds, as was the possibility of the war being over by Christmas; the tragedy being that a large proportion of those harbouring such optimism would be dead or wounded by Christmas, and not as they hoped, back in England. A prophecy of what was to come can be found in the pages of the Official History of 1914 – albeit written in retrospect – when Sir James Edmonds offered the ‘recipe’ for trench warfare which evolved on the Aisne and which would become familiar to the soldiers on both sides of the front line for the next three and a half years:
‘Artillery fire, though intermittent, never ceased for long. By day, sniping made it impossible to move about or to work except under cover; constant vigilance was required to detect enemy infantry attacks in good time. Night was livelier even than day, and was made almost as bright at times by the enemy’s flares and light balls; but during darkness working parties and supplies came up and reliefs were carried out.’202
Trenches were hardly a new phenomenon in warfare, Brigadier General Aylmer Haldane had, ‘a good deal of experience of a campaign of this nature’, when he had been attached to the Japanese Army as an observer in Manchuria in 1904. Haldane felt that trench warfare was bound to have been visited sooner or later on Europe, given, ‘the huge forces placed in the field by both sides and the limited frontage for deployment’. The French were so opposed to trenches and all that they stood for, that during the Battle of Charleroi, when General Charles Lanrezac had ordered his corps to entrench along the Sambre, many chose to ignore the order. Trenches contravened the spirit of élan which underwrote the French military doctrine of avance, no better expressed than by a young French officer in the 33rd Infantry Regiment called Charles de Gaulle:
‘Everywhere, always, one should have a single idea: to advance. As soon as the fighting begins everybody in the French Army, the general in command, the officers and the troops have only one thing in their heads – advancing, advancing to the attack, reaching for the Germans. And running them through or making them run away.’203
Naturally the Germans did not expect a situation to arise where positional warfare would be necessary since the Schlieffen Plan envisaged a complete victory in the west within forty days. They had, however, taken into consideration the material requirement for dealing with the French and Belgian forts. Unwittingly their arsenal of heavy siege batteries, searchlights, grenades and periscopes, all designed for the reduction of fortress defences, had in fact equipped them for trench warfare and they diverted these resources to the Aisne with some alacrity. On 14 September, the first trainload of heavy batteries and equipment arrived on the Aisne from Maubeuge.
Thus, when the Germans stood their ground on the Aisne and dug themselves in along the high ground, the French and British had little option but to begin their own parallel line of defences, resulting in the birth of what was to become known as the Western Front; a line of fortifications which would eventually stretch from the Swiss border to Nieuwpoort on the Belgian coast. Protection against the heavy calibre, high explosive shell fire, forced the British to dig ever deeper trenches and enter what became known as the ‘Augustan Period’ of field fortifications: narrow trenches with vertical sides, rarely continuous, 18 inches to 2 feet wide and often without traverses. Compared to the more elaborate defences which began to appear in late 1914, these holes in the ground were positively amateur. Barbed wire was soon introduced, although the feeble single strand in front of the South Wales Borderers’ trenches was dismissed as, ‘ridiculous’ by Captain Guy Ward. Needless to say both sides soon adapted to living below ground. Lieutenant Arthur Mills, a special reserve officer serving with 1/DCLI, arrived on the front line in October when the ferocity of the early days of the battle had all but died down:
‘We passed the morning sitting in the dug-out, reading a few old papers and smoking and talking. By eleven the sun was high enough to peep in over the top of the parapet and warm us, and it all seemed to me a very pleasant, lazy sort of existence. There was no firing except for an occasional “ping” from a sniper the [company commander] kept posted at the corner of the trench, and an answering shot or two from the German side. Rifle fire seemed a matter of tacit arrangement. When our sniper was joined by a friend, or fired two or three times in a minute instead of once every three or four, the German fire grew brisker and life in the trench less tranquil. Our sniper was thereupon reproved by the [company commander] and was silent, whereupon the German fire died down.’204
Some brigade commanders took the opportunity to ensure all officers were fully versed in the building of trench defences. Whether Hunter-Weston had a notion as to what the future would bring or not, his directive to the 11 Brigade battalions on 30 September instructed commanding officers to go round the whole of their defences with their officers, ‘pointing out for instructional purposes good and bad points of various works’. It was on the Aisne that the hated working parties – drawn largely from men serving in the infantry battalions – were first used to construct new trench lines, the Somersets’ war diary records fatigue parties digging new trenches on 28 September, using, one hopes, tools more suited to the job than the 1908 Pattern Entrenching Tool. The British infantryman’s entrenching tool was quickly found to be totally unsuitable for the task and it was only when the area was scoured for shovels which were distributed to the front line units and consignments of tools were brought up by the engineers that British casualties from the heavy German shelling began to decline. The spade was becoming a weapon of war.
Trench raids – that feature of later trench warfare which so often resulted in heavy casualties – were first practised on the slopes above the Aisne. Edmund Meade-Waldo, the machine-gun officer with 17 Brigade, wrote of a raid carried out by the 3rd Battalion of the Rifle Brigade on 25 September 1914:
‘The 3RB tried to capture by surprise a German advanced trench opposite their centre. The attack was a failure, Boden205 and Mackenzie being killed and Kennedy wounded and many ORs killed and wounded. The attack took place an hour before dawn when the Germans were naturally standing to!’206
Meade-Waldo’s rather sardonic comments did not reflect the feeling amongst senior officers who were convinced of the value of maintaining morale amongst the troops by offensive action. A note in the II Corps diary suggests that morale is best kept by, ‘small local attacks and enterprises, even with the knowledge that they must entail loss of men on missions of minor importance’. Offensive spirit was always regarded by senior officers as important in maintaining discipline and morale. Later in the war battalions would endeavour to maintain an aggressive dominance of no-man’s land by constant reconnaissance and fighting patrols. Trench raids could be carried out by small parties of men or, on occasion, by entire companies or even battalions and were generally deployed to gather intelligence on enemy forces or to destroy a particular enemy installation. In truth they were an unpopular but necessary facet of trench warfare.
Trenches were of course not a complete protection from shelling and the profusion of caves and quarries in the area offered what appeared to be a more substantial shelter from the often fatal attentions of high explosive. Sadly this was not always the case. During a bombardment on the Guards’ positions at Cour de Soupir Farm on 16 September, one 8-inch shell narrowly missed the farm buildings and landed in a nearby quarry where it exploded, killing and wounding over 100 men of the Guards and Ox and Bucks Light Infantry. Major Bernard Gordon Lennox was in the quarry at the time standing with Major Jeffreys and Captain Eben Pike:
‘In addition this same shell killed three officers of the Oxfords, and a medical officer. How it missed Jeffreys, George Powell, Eben Pike and self will forever remain a mystery. It killed and wounded people who were more under cover than we were, sitting all together. It killed and wounded people to our rear, front and left, but for some unknown reason we all escaped untouched.’207
Lieutenant James Huggan’s death in the quarry was one of many which befell RAMC doctors attached to infantry battalions.208 The 25-year-old was a well-known Scottish international rugby player and was killed the day after another Scottish international, Lieutenant Ronald Simson, was killed in action serving with 16/Battery.209 Serving as medical officer with 1/KRRC, Captain Harry Ranken was the only serving soldier of the RAMC to win a Victoria Cross on the Aisne.210 On 19 September one of his legs was shattered by shell fire but despite his wounds, Ranken continued to tend to the wounded, ultimately sacrificing his own life. Having borne the shock of amputation he died of his wounds on 25 September 1914. His death was followed by that of Lieutenant William Ball who was killed in action with the South Staffordshires six days later.211
The need to provide some sort of shelter from shell fire became a priority amongst the battalions manning the front line positions. On the Chemin des Dames, Lieutenant Evelyn Needham spent the evening of 14 September digging after what he described as a, ‘very unsatisfactory’ day:
We had attacked, but in vain, without artillery support and with no sort of knowledge as to where we were going, and what we were bumping up against. We had lost five officers (two killed) and over one hundred other ranks …we all got busy after supper, digging holes for ourselves to form some sort of shelter in the high bank of the terrace which, while giving marvellous protection from hostile shell fire, gave none against the rain.’212
They spent the 15th improving their shelters and constructing a large dug-out in the hillside for an officers’ mess to the tune of ‘hundreds’ of ‘Black Marias’ and ‘Coal Boxes’ landing with deafening explosions in the valley below. Black Marias were something which Lieutenant Geoffrey Prideaux serving with the Somersets was very familiar with. His diary account of an artillery bombardment at Bucy-le-Long on the 17th has one almost running for cover. He must have wondered if the German gunners were actually aiming at him, bearing in mind this was the second occasion in two days on which he had been caught in such a barrage in the very same village:
‘About 11.00am the Germans started to bombard Bucy village with their 8.2-inch howitzers, which throw a shell of 290lbs, filled with high explosive. This bombardment lasted for 1 hour and 10 minutes, and was the severest we had undergone …To show the force of explosion of these shells, one shell fell into a yard and blew to bits seven horses and six men, smashed in the back wall of the house in front and, blew two men who were in the house, into the street. They were not hurt, only shaken, but they were quite black from the smoke.’213
Bernard Gordon Lennox was less descriptive, commenting only that the Black Maria ‘makes a hole in the ground big enough to bury 3 or 4 horses in’. However he did confess to getting a bad headache when one burst too close! Apart from being dubbed Coal Boxes and Black Marias by the troops they were often referred to as ‘Jack Johnsons’ after a popular black American heavyweight boxer. Corporal Cuthbert Avis serving with the Queen’s was introduced to Jack Johnsons on the Chemin des Dames and thought the, ‘noise of the explosion was very nerve wracking and the blast powerful and dangerous’, the shell making, ‘a deep, wide circumference crater’.
But for Jack Needham and his company of Northamptons up above Troyon, most of the shells tended to land below them in the allotment gardens of the village. It was whilst he was idly watching the allotments under fire on 17 September that the Germans launched an attack on their line in the pouring rain and, ‘in considerable strength’. His company was in reserve but was hastily summoned to the firing line where the battalion was ordered to counter attack:
‘We reached the road (Chemin des Dames) and lay down there for a few minutes to get our breath. Then Payker gave the order to fix bayonets and a few minutes later to charge. Over the low bank we went, Payker shouting, “Come on, the Cobblers!” and the men cheering like hell. I ran as hard as best I could over the roots with my drawn sword in one hand and my revolver in the other, stumbling and cursing over the roots and expecting every minute to be tripped up by my sword scabbard! We charged through heavy rifle and machine-gun fire and men were dropping off in every direction. We got to about thirty yards from the trench we had passed over on Monday and which was now strongly held. By now everyone was pretty well blown, and I was thankful when I saw the whole line throwing themselves down flat.’214
With a firing line established, the Northamptons and the KRRC on their right kept up a continuous fire on the Germans in front of them. After, ‘what seemed like hours later’, Needham was informed by a messenger that his company commander, Captain Robert Parker – or Payker to the company officers – had been killed and he was now in command.215 Not only that, said the messenger, but the company of KRRC on his right had all their officers killed or wounded and he was now in command of those as well! Sending a runner back to ask for orders, the message arrived back from Osborne-Smith telling Needham to hold on where he was and keep up as much fire as possible on the German trench:
‘Then suddenly I heard the men shouting, “They’re surrendering!” and looking up I saw a line of white flags (or rather white handkerchiefs or something of the kind tied to the muzzles of rifles) held up all along the German trench …I shouted to the men to cease fire and stop where they were.’216
Needham watched as several hundred German infantrymen left their trenches and began moving towards A Company where they stood apparently talking to Captain John Savage and Lieutenant John Dimmer of the KRRC.217 After a few minutes Dimmer and Savage turned and began walking back to the British line – the white flags were still in evidence said Needham:
‘To our horror, after they had got about halfway to us, the Germans opened fire on them and we saw Savage pitch forward dead, shot in the back, while Dimmer threw himself down and started to crawl back to us, eventually reaching our line all right.’218
Horrified and unable to take his eyes off the carnage which was unfolding in front of him was 20-year-old Second Lieutenant Cosmo Gordon, a grandson of General Gordon of Khartoum fame.219 Gordon had been gazetted into the battalion in January and was described by Needham as, ‘a typical cheery, plucky boy straight from Sandhurst’. Needham later wrote that he only realized young Gordon had been hit when, ‘he pitched forward on his face and yelled out, “Oh my God, I’m hit!” He writhed about on the ground in agony and I tried to keep him quiet, while at the same time trying to watch Dimmer and what was going on down the line’.
Corporal John Stennett was witness to the events from the C Company line where the men had stood up to receive the prisoners:
‘All of a sudden the front line of Germans fell flat and a second line opened a rapid fire with machine guns and rifles cutting us down like mowing corn. Of 187 that started 8 of us came out, 6 being wounded and two without a scratch, and if it had not been for the Queen’s Royal West Surreys we should have been prisoners or perhaps done in, but they took them in hand and cut them up in all directions. Then they had the sauce to show the white flag again but the Queen’s ignored it.’220
Stennets’s account was written in England after he had been evacuated with wounds received during the white flag encounter. But although he confuses his dates, he is correct about the second white flag incident during which he is quite sure the Queen’s ignored the enemy’s signs of surrender and opened fire. On this occasion, a short time after the first, another party of Germans approached the Northamptons’ lines with their hands up. This time there was no discussion and the second group were mown down almost to a man by the Queen’s machine guns. Whether this group did genuinely wish to surrender or not will forever remain a mystery but this and other similar incidents did have serious repercussions for some prisoners of war whose experiences are described later. The encounter concluded with the British occupying the trenches evacuated by the Germans, Needham finding the trench, ‘full of dead and dying Germans’, which they proceeded to fill in, ‘burying the dead, all of us furious and embittered at having seen Savage and Gordon killed under the white flag like that’. All in all it had been a bad day for the Northamptons.
It had not been a good day for the Queen’s either. Apart from the German counter attack on the Chemin des Dames and the dreadful white flag episode, Cuthbert Avis was aware that earlier in the morning the Moroccans on the left of the battalion had been pushed back by the German 28th Infantry Division and units of XII Corps which left the Queen’s flank unprotected until it was hastily filled by reserves from the British 2 Brigade. But to make matters worse, the subsequent French artillery barrage also plastered the Queen’s trenches causing some casualties. Then, wrote Avis, ‘the commanding officer, Colonel Warren met his death by a sniper’s bullet and the adjutant, Captain Charles Wilson was killed at regimental headquarters near a haystack’.221 Avis ends his diary on 18 September having been wounded by a shell splinter and evacuated.
Whether a conscious decision to concentrate infantry attacks on the right of the BEF’s line had been made by the Germans or not, after 19 September it certainly looked as though this was the case. On the left flank, Vailly, Missy and Bucy-le-Long were heavily shelled on a regular basis but no infantry attacks were forthcoming apart from that made on the 3rd Division on 20 September. The assault began with a diversionary attack on 9 Brigade which was southwest of Rouge Maison Farm and was dealt with swiftly by the Royal Fusiliers. Any discussion the Germans may have had about counter attacking was probably interrupted by some very accurate shelling by two howitzers from XXX Brigade. The Fusiliers then drove the enemy snipers from the woods to their front and by 1.00pm peace had once again descended on the line. A similar artillery bombardment had been directed at the 7 Infantry Brigade positions between 8.00 and 9.00am that morning and it soon became apparent that the attack on 9 Brigade had been a feint to draw reserves away from the main focus of attack.
In the 7 Brigade firing lines were 2/Royal Irish Rifles and 1/Wiltshires with the 3/Worcesters in reserve. Leading the attack were two German infantry Regiments, IR56 and IR64. The first Alexander Johnston at 7 Brigade HQ heard of the attack was a message from the Irish Rifles stating that they were under heavy attack. Brigade HQ was situated at the time close to the minor road running northeast from Croix Bury on the D925. The events which followed were chronicled in Johnstone’s diary account which levels a degree of criticism at his brigade commander’s use of reserves:
‘The General [McCracken] therefore promptly sent up one company of the 2nd South Lancs to their support. This was a mistake. I thought so at the time and still do: the 2nd Irish Rifles though heavily attacked had not asked for help yet and were pretty well holding their own. The result was that our reserve of one weak battalion was already diminished by one quarter. Soon after there seemed to be fairly heavy musketry fire in the 1st Wilts lines and the General promptly sent up another company of the 2nd South Lancs. Here again we had merely heard heavy firing so far, and like the 2nd Irish Rifles the 1st Wilts still had a company of the 3rd Worcesters as a local reserve.’222
With only two companies of the South Lancs left in reserve Johnstone bit his tongue and awaited developments. In the meantime German infantry, screened by dense undergrowth, had pushed through a gap in the line between the Worcesters and the Wiltshires and were firing across in enfilade at the Irish and Worcester lines. John Lucy remembered the South Lancs arriving in support and the shot which first indicated they were being fired on from behind:
‘An officer from an English regiment came up offering reinforcements, saying he had a company close behind us in the woods. This had been sent forward to support us by strengthening our weakening line, but he was told he was not wanted. He was shot down with a bullet through his head, as he was delivering his message.’223
A second officer from the same company was also shot down and a short time later Johnstone witnessed a company of 2/South Lancs which, ‘came bolting in on us: there was perfect pandemonium while we stopped these fellows and tried to get them to go on again’. There is no indication that this was the same company, but for a short while it looked as if the Germans had finally managed to achieve what they failed to do a week earlier – break through and split II Corps from Haig’s I Corps divisions on the right.
‘The Germans had obviously got through our line somehow and one did not know what had happened to the 1st Wilts in front. We called up the last company of the 2nd South Lancs, who were in the cutting just below us, but had great difficulty in getting them to go forward … the situation indeed seemed serious, the Germans were right in our position now, the wood within 150 yards of Brigade HQ was full of German snipers picking off our men as they showed themselves, they had got a maxim there too which was doing a lot of damage.’224
Whilst this was taking place, the three companies of Wiltshires – in the centre of the line – were holding the enemy at bay but, like the Irish Rifles, were under a heavy artillery attack. Second Lieutenant Clive Gaskell, a Special Reserve officer who had only been with the battalion for twenty-four hours, recalled his baptism of fire vividly:
‘We were lying along the edge of the road and by this time the rifle fire was very heavy and also the Germans were putting over lots of big HE shells – several of these burst along our road and just above us in the stubble. We were smothered in earth and stones and the man next to me (Private Stagg)225 and several more of my thirty [men] were killed and also Captain Reynolds who was in the trench.’226
From Clive Gaskell’s evidence it seems that there was yet another white flag incident opposite the Wiltshire lines that morning. There had already been a successful ruse employed earlier by the Germans who had taken one section of trench after shouting across to the Wiltshires from the woods that they were firing upon their own men. Gaskell then watched fascinated as a large number of Germans stood up without their rifles and with their hands above their heads:
‘They looked immense men. Then one of their officers walked boldly out towards me and said, “Come and take us.” I thought this a very happy turn of events as hitherto I thought we were certainly getting the worst of things and I was about to go forward towards him when I heard, “don’t you show yourself there,” and turning round I saw a subaltern of the 2nd South Lancs – Sutton by name – who had crept up to me along the road. “Oh,” he said, “if you had been out from the beginning you wouldn’t be taken in so easily. It’s only a trick. They have got a machine gun hidden there and when you and your men get up they shoot you down”.’227
Fortunately before Gaskell could react, someone loosed off a round and the Germans ran for cover.
Events turned in favour of the British when a company of 2/South Staffords from the 2nd Division began working their way up the valley on the enemy’s left flank and a gun from XXIII Brigade RFA opened fire on the gathering German infantry. ‘They got the range first shot’, wrote a relieved Johnstone, ‘and had to risk putting a shell into our own fellows: however as it happened it was the turning point of the day’. Clive Gaskell thought the first shell, ‘had laid out the whole lot’, with its, ‘terrific explosion and volume of bright green smoke’. Johnston was right about it being the turning point, at around 4.00pm an advance by the Wiltshires, Irish Rifles and Worcesters finally pushed the enemy back to their own lines, leaving, the Official History tells us, ‘the ground behind littered with his killed and wounded’. Johnstone stood by his criticism of McCracken:
‘I am convinced that had we been more careful with our reserves until we had some idea of the situation, and then given a unit a definite task such as to clear the wood just N of Brigade HQ, we should have done much better. As it was we were at one time in rather a tight corner with only a platoon in reserve and the Germans within a few yards of Brigade HQ.’228
The day’s fighting had cost 7 Brigade some 400 casualties, most of which were from 2/South Lancs. The Wiltshires’ casualties, although comparatively light, did include the commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur W. Hasted. Hasted was the second commanding officer in 7 Brigade to be wounded in the space of two days, joining Colonel Wilkinson Bird of the Irish Rifles who was badly wounded on 19 September.
The attacks on the 2nd Division on the morning of 20 September began at dawn and fell on the King’s Liverpool Regiment’s front, east of the canal and on the Connaught Rangers, positioned on the ridge further to the east on the Beaulne spur. Lieutenant William Synge of the King’s found dawn of 20 September to be wet and misty when he was, ‘rudely disturbed by the rattle of machine gun’. Hurriedly moving his men under cover, he spotted the tell-tale cloud of steam which issues from the water jacket of the Maxim machine gun betraying its position in the strip of wood which ran down to the lock keeper’s house. ‘We knew the range, and that machine gun was finished off in half a minute’. Watching from his company trenches – which were a little above those of C and D Companies – Synge and his men were able to catch the German attack in a deadly crossfire, ‘it was exactly like ferreting for rabbits, and I do not think many of those who came out of the wood got back into it again’.
At about 9.00am the German infantry made a second, more determined attack:
‘The attack had now veered round to our right, and we could catch glimpses of the enemy running about on the high ground above. As they were also firing down onto us through the wood, things were by no means pleasant. At this time I was sent back by the Colonel with a message to the second-in-command, who was back on the hill top above Moussy, finding a position onto which we might fall back if the worst came to the worst …on getting back to the Colonel, who was in the same place. Namely where the pathway entered the wood, I found that matters were going very badly indeed’.229
The Connaughts by this time had been shelled out of their trenches, the German artillery getting the exact range of the forward trenches which, in the words of the war diary, ‘made them untenable’. The King’s right flank was now dangerously exposed and enemy infantry began firing down on the King’s from above, ‘for a moment or two we all thought that they were through and that very soon we should be surrounded’. But Synge’s qualms were soon dispelled by the arrival of reinforcements in the form of two platoons from B Company of the Highland Light Infantry and six from 2/Worcesters. The consequent counter attack captured the first line German trench beyond the Connaughts’ positions but elation turned to anguish when the relieving force was ambushed in the woods. There was momentary chaos as the British fell back on A Company of the King’s:
‘The Colonel, however, refused to retire, and sent me up with a message to the commander of A Company, which was holding the trenches in the wood, to the effect that he must hold out, and there were no more reinforcements. This captain, owing to the thickness of the wood was very much in the dark as to what was going on, swung his line round slightly so it was facing the crest, and ordered his men to fire rapid fire until further orders into the trees towards the hill-top … this move, I think, saved the situation, for the Germans began to withdraw.’230
It had been another close call. Synge was of the opinion that, ‘had the country been more open, and had they been able to see what they were doing’, the Germans would have got right through the British lines and into Moussy where they would have captured the guns and, ‘also probably the Brigadier and his staff’. The Official History felt the day belonged to the King’s as their casualties did not exceed fifty, but far in excess of that figure was the casualty return from the Highland Light Infantry. After leaving Verneuil to support the Worcesters – under attack on the Beaulne spur – every man from B Company who took part in the counter attack was either killed or wounded. Lieutenant William Lilburn, who led the two platoons of Highlanders, only managed to get back himself after dark with a few of the survivors. The day’s fighting cost the Highland Light Infantry three officers killed and two others wounded, they also lost Lieutenant John O’Connell, the battalion’s medical officer who was killed tending the wounded. In the ranks twenty men were killed, seventy wounded and twenty-five missing.231
Other casualties of the day included Major William Sarsfield, the commanding officer of the Connaughts who had led the battalion since late August. The shell fire which drove the battalion out of its trenches killed Sarsfield and 22-year-old Second Lieutenant Robert de Stacpoole, the fourth son of the Duke of Stacpoole. Three other officers were also killed along with thirty-five other ranks killed and wounded.232
John McIlwain was less than complimentary in his diary about Robert de Stacpoole’s brother, George, who was serving in the battalion. Commenting on the day’s events, MacIlwain was not pleased at the prospect of having Lieutenant de Stacpoole as his company officer, ‘who is hardly in a fit state to take charge of anyone. His nerves are all to rags’. Although not corroborated by the war diary, MacIlwain does give us an indication of the strength of the battalion – despite being reinforced by about 200 officers and men from the special reserve a week earlier – he estimated the battalion was less than 400 strong at roll call on 21 September.
Up at Cour de Soupir Farm the Grenadiers were under shell fire for most of the day on 20 September but were not under any direct infantry attack on the scale of the attacks launched against the two brigades on their left. Major Bernard Gordon Lennox and his company relieved Number 3 Company at dawn and were busy improving the trench when a Jack Johnson exploded just above him:
‘The man in the pit next door was badly hit by a shell, and has since had his arm off. My coat had the right arm nearly taken off at the shoulder and the left sleeve cut to bits, and it was only a yard off me, but I am thankful to say I was not inside the coat at the time. After that they left us pretty well alone till the afternoon. The battery that is plastering us like this is so close that one has no warning of the shell coming along: the only thing one hears is the burst and woe betide you if you aren’t down in the bottom [of the trench].’233
After dark there was a half-hearted attack which failed to materialize on the Guards’ frontage but did have the effect of ensuring every other man was standing at arms in expectation. Gordon Lennox was of the opinion that the German infantry were reluctant to face the Guards in their entrenched positions, adding, ‘I think they are very wise’.