A short march on 18 January brought us to the all too familiar desolation of Englebelmer, looking, if anything, worse than when we left it. It was more battered, more empty, the roads were ploughed a foot deeper, and the mud was everywhere and more plastic. It had defied even the efforts of the frost.
There we stopped for the night and after a sleep in whatever shelter we could find we stowed our packs at Brigade HQ and marched by way of Mesnil and Hamel to Thiepval Wood where the whole of our company and B Company were shoved in a long German tunnel in the hillside to act as general reserves. That meant work, plenty of it too, with very little time to sleep.
The tunnel was in a shocking state. Whoever had used it before us must have been filthy pigs. Some had used it instead of the latrine and bully beef and Maconochie’s were strewn about in various stages of decomposition. The stench was horrible and the whole place alive with lice. Thank God our period in General Reserve was only for forty-eight hours, then for a spell up the line. In the valley below us was the river or swamp of the Ancre and across the other side the battered and barely visible remains of the station at St Pierre Divion, taken by the Hoods under Freyberg on 13 and 14 November. All the water in the valley was frozen and the ground all round was frozen hard, too.
I had a scrounge round in the morning among the German trenches and dugouts and came across one of our tanks that had been put out of action and left derelict. From the top of the hill I could see half a dozen such tanks. I crawled inside that one for a look round but couldn’t make much out of it, except to feel sympathy for the poor devils who had to fight in them. Certainly they were secure from such things as rifle and machine-gun bullets, but a 5.9 would make a hell of a mess of one and its occupants. I got out rather hurriedly because Jerry had started slinging a few shells over. The tunnel gave one a sense of security but the stench in it almost drove one out again to risk the shells. It is an open question, whether it is better to be shot or poisoned.
There was a huge quantity of German implements of war knocking about on the hillside, rifles, trench mortars, ammunition, bombs, and rifle grenades. We soon had fatigue parties out clearing up and one new fool, just out, mistook a German bomb for a cricket ball and kicked it. It detonated. Result: one reinforcement, minus one leg, not expected to recover. Some of the new men needed nursing like babies. They were in for a good breaking in in this sector, though, as far as I could judge.
I was put in charge of a ration party at night and sent up to the front line with huge metal flasks of hot soup. They were made on the Thermos principle, held about two gallons of liquid and were strapped on the backs of the men. I went in front with the guide, and our way lay over a frozen expanse of mud and snow, part of the way along a duckboard track. At times the duckboards ended suddenly in a shell hole made by a 5.9 or an 8-inch and, as the night was black as ink, some of the men had nasty falls. However, I got my party up without any serious hurt and with all my soup intact. I reached one trench which I took to be the firing line as the men were on watch on the fire-step in good strength. ‘Where do you want this soup?’ I asked the first sergeant I saw. ‘We could do with it here,’ he said, ‘but they want it in the front line.’ The front line was another 300 yards ahead and consisted of a series of shell holes, not connected in any way. The men were doing forty-eight hours in front and no movement at all was possible during daylight as the Germans could spot their every movement and were continually shelling them.
The poor devils were about frozen stiff and some of them were running and stamping about on top of their holes when we got up to them. ‘Where’s Headquarters dug-out?’ I asked one chap. ‘The next hole on the left,’ he replied. I made him take me to it because my men were fed up with wandering about in the dark and things seemed so damned uncertain. I had been used to a continuous trench with a belt of wire of sorts in front, something definite separating us from the German. Here everything was different and one got a distinct sense of insecurity and lost the sense of direction that comes from a proper trench.
I found a better constructed hole at the next with an officer and a sergeant in a little dugout. I’d just reported ‘Rations for your party, Sir’ when Jerry sent over a couple of whizz-bangs, wicked devils of things that burst twice, once in the air and again on concussion. They were right amongst us but no one was hurt. It was a wonderful thing because my party were all bunched together and we could feel the lumps whizzing past us and smell the fumes from the explosion. ‘For God’s sake get down,’ yelled the officer, ‘he’ll shell for ten minutes now.’ He didn’t, however, and we carried on serving soup. Back again to the tunnel about 3.00am without further incident.
Our turn on outpost at night and we moved up about 5.00pm. Just as we reached the support line we got shelled pretty badly. Jerry opened up with a few 8-inch, 5.9s and we had several casualties. We took what cover we could until he had piped down and then made our way out to the shell holes. I was in charge of one shell hole, with six of my section, and some attempt had been made to consolidate it. We carried on the good work with our entrenching tools and made it deeper and also made a fire-step in it. It kept us warm and it was absolutely necessary to work to keep ourselves alive. I had never experienced anything so bitterly cold. The next hole to us on the right, about fifty yards away, was manned by the Ansons and one of their men froze to death during the night.
My recollections of getting through the day that followed are very hazy. Most of my men were in a sort of coma and it was only by continually keeping on the move that I kept alive. I dug away with my entrenching tool until my hands were raw and my back almost breaking but I kept my blood circulating. We could get nothing hot to drink and had nothing to eat but biscuits and frozen bully beef. I kept having a look out to the front during the day and to the left front some distance away could see the remains of a village which I made out to be Grandcourt. Just to our front was a dip and the Germans were down there. Nothing much to fear from them except at night when they might make a sudden raid on one of our outposts. Nothing to see to have a shot at, but in any case it was a question whether the rifles would work. The bolts were frozen in.
Relieved at 6.00pm. Thank God. Another twelve hours of that would have killed some of us off. Only moved back to the support trench where things were very little better, except that one could move about a bit more freely and make a fire to brew some tea.
We were practically all on watch at night as Jerry was supposed to be on the prowl. He was expected to be moving back from there any time but was putting up a feint of aggression in the form of sudden raids. Spasms of shelling all night and everybody was about frozen stiff. I was sent back to the tunnel at 1.00pm on the 23rd with a party of eight men. ‘Get a rest, a feed and get back to the line by 8.00pm with picks and shovels for dugout work.’ Six hour shifts. What a life! Horses were dropping dead in hundreds but the RN Division carried on.
Back to the tunnel after my six hours. I had no need to dig but I did it to keep myself awake and alive. I turned in when I got back, in the filth and muck and lice of the stinking tunnel, and had a sleep, the first sleep since leaving Englebelmer on the 18th; it was now the 23rd. There was a spasm on 190 Brigade’s front during the night: a strong party of Germans made their way down the frozen river and cleared one of the Hood outposts. After a pretty severe hand-to-hand scrap the Germans were driven back, having sustained several casualties. They left a few dead to be buried, but a few of the Hoods too, the officer, Sub-Lieutenant McCormick, and seven men killed and a score wounded. Little things like that never found their way into the papers at home, but it was an everyday happening on the front and part of our routine.
Jerry shelled the valley and the road to the tunnel during the night and most of the next day (24th) but it would have taken a pretty hefty shell to reach us in the tunnel.
Our battalion had arranged a raid for the night, one officer, Lieutenant Spinney, and two bombers from C Company. They went over without any fuss and took possession of a German outpost, killing the garrison and smashing up the place pretty badly with bombs. The same officer, with Lieutenant Wren and four men, went over again the next night but failed to pull things off quite so easily. Spinney was wounded and died shortly after they got him back to our lines. It wasn’t wise to tempt fate too often. She is a fickle jade, one day all for you, and throwing an invulnerable curtain around you so that you can face the horrors of the war with impunity, but the next day she is for somebody else and you get what you have been asking for.
Saw a splendid fight in the air during the afternoon. Three Taubes ventured over our lines and managed to get through the curtain of anti-aircraft shells that was thrown at them. Two of our fighting planes dropped down out of the blue and one Taube came crashing down to earth. That evened up the party and we watched some very pretty stunt-flying for five minutes before Jerry turned tail and made for home, one of them obviously in trouble, for he made for the ground as fast as he could with safety.
News around on the morning of the 25th that 1 RM would relieve us at 1.00pm. The relief came off to time and we made our weary way back to Englebelmer. Shoved into tumbledown billets, which we set about making as habitable and comfy as possible. It was a queer thing this taking over of billets: whenever we left any we had a proper cleaning-up time; in our battalion platoon NCOs were responsible for their billets being spotless, with no litter, empty tins or chunks of bully lying about. Floors had to be swept, usually with old sandbags, then the company OC came along and they had to satisfy him. But when we took any over, even from our 1st Battalion – which, by the way, was always second to ours, except in number – we always had the same process to go through. We would find everything in a state of filth.
Twenty-five degrees of frost failed to curb the frantic efforts of the lice. The extreme cold was killing off horses and men but had no effect whatever on lice, except to make them dig in more. Kelly Clayton and George Hedley were in one continual squirm.
The postbag kept us all more or less busy until time to turn in: parcels and letters galore.
Morning came and with it a keener frost than ever. Some bright engineers had rigged up hot shower baths in the village and we marched down by platoons for the unexpected luxury. What a disillusion. Our platoon of course, being No. 1 A Company was first, and we found the floor of the baths a sheet of ice on which we had to stand shivering in our nakedness until the hot water gradually thawed its way through the blocks of ice in the few watering can knobs above us. We must have been hard as nails to stand that lot. I really think that the worse conditions seem to get the more we thrived.
The Marine Band from Deal played in the YMCA hut at night and cheered us up a bit. It’s wonderful what a bit of decent music can do to a chap.
I got a shock on the following morning, the 27th. Company Sergeant Major Dick Howarth asked me if I would like a square number. ‘What is it, Dick?’ I asked him. ‘Anything to do with the line?’ I was a bit dubious. ‘No, it’s alright,’ he laughed, ‘it’s a good number, and I’ve to pick a good corporal and nine men to be attached to the REs at Aveluy.’ I accepted. REs usually knew how to do themselves well and it meant a few trips to Albert, only twenty minutes’ walk from Aveluy.
Set off about 3.00pm with my nine good men and true and reported to the REs’ sergeant major. It was a mining company and about every other man from the major downwards had a decoration of some sort or other: VCs, DSOs, DCMs and MMs were as common with them as hard tack was with us. ‘How did you get all those?’ I asked one sergeant. ‘Rations,’ he said with a grin, ‘one comes up every week whether we want it or not.’
We were stowed away in a palatial dugout with spring mattresses on the bunks. Found various other fatigue parties there from the Howes and Ansons, about sixty of us all told. Rations were fine and work not very strenuous. We went up to Thiepval a few times; the REs were constructing new, up-to-date dugouts in the remains of the village and our job was digging and carrying out the earth and rock while the REs got busy with tape measures and two-foot rules, and a few instructions.
Not one trip up to the first trench system did we do, our nearest being a general reserve trench where we constructed a new dugout. I think it only fair to say that, during the time I was attached to that company of engineers, none of them received any additional medals.
Why we should have been constructing brand new dugouts with steel girders and walls lined with one-inch planks I am at a loss to understand. The Bosch was expected to flit from these quarters at any time, and signs were fairly obvious that our people were making preparations to help him away with a push.
Our 189 Brigade attacked on 3 February, just a trench-to-trench attack timed to take about ten minutes but which actually took fifty hours of terrible fighting in which the brigade lost twenty-four officers and 647 ORs, a big proportion of them killed. They succeeded, however, and took two lines of trenches commanding Grandcourt. Captures amounted to two officers and 225 men, about forty of whom were wounded, and a few machine guns.
The success of the attack was soon apparent, for on the night of the 5th, when our Brigade had taken over from 189, a patrol of the Howes pushed into Grandcourt and came back with rifles left by the Bosch. Upon receiving this information, Colonel Hutchinson took our battalion forward and took possession of the whole place without a casualty.
Thus started the first move in the great German retreat. Well done the Navy!