The battalion moved up about 3.00pm and took over the trenches on the ridge. We had quite a number of 5.9s amongst us during the day but very little damage was caused by them. The field guns round about us appeared to be the object of the shelling and they must have suffered enormous losses. Battery ammunition dumps were going up in flames all over the place. We had only to stop in these trenches for a few hours until dusk, before moving forward to relieve our other two brigades who were badly in need of rest.
A little stunt was also on the plans, but we could get nothing from our captain, Wanky Mitchell. If ever any man was mad and unfit to be in charge of a company of men, Wanky Mitchell was the man. Lieutenant Hardy, one of our other officers, told us himself that he was mad and he’d thought of mentioning it to the CO. Hardy himself wasn’t very happy about things. He used to be as cheery and happy a soul as any in the battalion, but since coming up the line he had been horribly depressed and hadn’t mended things much by consuming enormous quantities of neat rum and whiskey.
The night before we moved from Ecouvrie, the officers of our company joined us in the sergeants’ mess and we spent a convivial night with the rum jar. Tongues were loosened to such an extent by the fiery spirit that the officers forgot for a time that they were officers and Hardy for one let us see that he wasn’t looking forward with much pleasure to our expected scrap. He had won heavily at cards with the other officers and told us that he had at least £50 in English and French notes on him and that whoever found his body was welcome to the money. What a cheerful spirit to start a scrap in. Wanky Mitchell! Well we didn’t know what to make of him. He had a tendency for religious mania, but whether it was assumed or not for the purpose of working his passage back before the stunt we couldn’t say.
Jock Saunders, platoon sergeant of No. 2 had brought a water bottle full of neat rum with him and, being a typical Scot, drank the lot. I had a stroll amongst No. 2 Platoon during the night and came across somebody grovelling along the trench on hands and knees and making vain efforts to climb over the back of the trench. It was Jock and in one hand he had his rifle with bayonet fixed and all the time he was muttering ‘Where are the bloody Germans? Let me get at the bastards.’ I talked to him a bit and managed to get his rifle away from him, but off he went again. ‘Let me get at ’em.’ Just then Colonel Hutchinson came along looking for Wanky Mitchell and, of course, spotted Jock and the condition he was in. ‘Get four men, Sergeant,’ he said to me, ‘and keep this man under arrest.’ He told me the battalion was moving forward but I should have to stay there all night and look after Jock; I should hear from them in the morning. As soon as they had gone I found the best spot in the company sector, told one man off as a cook and, after a supper, we settled down for the night. Jock had dropped into a drunken sleep and kept moaning and shouting out all night. Sleep was impossible for me and I kept watch all night while my men slept like logs.
The night was fairly quiet with the exception of a few spasms of shelling down by Gavrelle. Just before dawn Jerry started slinging over gas shells in the dip about a hundred yards to our front. Over they came, six at a time. First came the familiar shriek of the shell through the air, then, instead of the deafening crash and crunch of high explosive, there was nothing more than a slight pop. There was no wind and, as it got a little lighter, I went forward to the edge of the ridge overlooking the valley and could see the gas as it hung like a pall over the little hollows in the ground. About 2,000 to 3,000 yards away I could see the church and village of Gavrelle, both of which looked in a pretty fair state from here.
About ten o’clock in the morning I was on the ridge again when I noticed two men coming towards me. One belonged to the Ansons, the other was a German and in a pretty bad way. I took them both along to our dugout and, as the cook had just made tea and a nice pudding, I gave them both a feed. I made the German understand that he was welcome to anything we had, but he wanted nothing but a drink of tea and that cold. He made signs that he was wounded through the chest and couldn’t eat. Just as he was finishing his tea a brigadier and lieutenant colonel of the Royal Field Artillery dropped into the trench and the brigadier asked me what party we were, what we were doing, and what the German was doing there with us. I made him wise and then he started talking in German to the prisoner and got information from him regarding his regiment, etc. He belonged to the 55th Reserve of Guards, the same lot that we were up against at Beaumont-Hamel. The brigadier then wished us a polite ‘Good Morning’ and took himself off. His colonel stopped behind to whisper a few kind words in my private ear. He said I ought to have called the whole party up to attention when the general came along. I told him I had saluted both when he came up and when he went away and hadn’t thought it necessary to bring the whole party up to attention. I told him even saluting in the trenches was not insisted upon in our lot. ‘Probably not,’ he said, ‘but this case is different, now you have a German prisoner with you, and it was up to you to show him that they are not up against a Rag-time Army.’ He was awfully nice about it and I gave him an extra-smart salute when he sheered off. They both left me with the impression of being two very pleasant gentlemen and altered my views a little regarding senior officers.
About half an hour later Colonel Hutchinson came along from the front and asked me how the prisoner (meaning Jock of course) was. I told him he was sober enough and sorry enough now. ‘Have your party all ready for moving in half an hour,’ he said. He was just going over to Brigade Headquarters and when he came back he would show us the way to our company. We moved off as soon as he came back and he led us at a fair old pace across open country which was in full view of Jerry. He kept away from the communication trench for about a mile, past derelict German field guns in concrete emplacements and ammunition dumps, past groups of dead men as they lay rotting on the ground. After a time he dropped into a communication trench of sorts that had been renamed Thames Alley by our troops. It was in a badly-battered condition with dead men lying about in all attitudes and various stages of mutilation and rottenness. Lewis guns, German machine guns, trench mortars, ammunition and bombs were scattered all over the place. I noticed that, although there were dead Germans in plenty lying about, our own dead far outnumbered them.
Thames Trench ended at Battalion Headquarters and the Colonel stopped there and told me to report at my own company HQ. He pointed out the way, and it lay over open ground as far as the support trenches and he advised me to run as we were very liable to get sniped. We were! Bullets were soon zipping amongst us and the advice to run was superfluous. With all my experience of warfare I had not acquired that pitch of courage or foolhardiness to walk calmly through a hail of bullets. In fact, I never have seen anyone like that yet, although I have read about them. I think that spirit is only acquired by the aid of other spirits, say a canteen of rum, or a bottle of whiskey.
Poor old Jock’s spirits had evaporated and he was quite as eager to run as the rest of us. We had about 300 yards to go to the nearest trench which lay along the near edge of the village, and I think we all made it in record time. We had an audience of a crowd of our men in the trench for the last fifty yards and they were splitting their sides at our frantic efforts to join them. We did join them and without mishap and I made my way to my platoon which was in a bit of a trench leading up to the front line.
I found Billy hard at work on a funk hole for Jim Hearne and himself, and I straightway joined him in making it big enough for the three of us. I scrounged some iron sheeting and logs of wood and we soon had a shelter that would stand anything up to a direct hit from a 5.9.
We had a busy time at night with the wounded men of 189 and 190 Brigades. Just by our trench was the uncut German wire, not like ordinary wire but like saws about half an inch wide and there were great masses of it, yards wide. Scores of our men were lying out in it and had been for three days. No one had made any attempt to see to them before and the poor devils who were alive were in a terrible condition. One poor lad had had a leg shot off above the knee and the stump was one mass of sepsis and gangrene. Nothing for him but morphia, and plenty of it. How the devil he had kept alive for three days and two nights I can’t imagine. Others died as we got them into our trench; just a few had hopes of life but very slender hopes. We made no attempt to tackle the dead; we left them for the pioneer battalion.
Our C and D Companies were in the line in front and some were holding the ruins of the village and both they and the Germans were inclined to be windy. Time after time the SOS lights were sent up, to be replied to immediately by both our own and Jerry’s artillery.
The night was pandemonium and the dawn was greeted with a terrific barrage put down by both sides. Sleep was absolutely out of the question and the dugout on which Billy and I had spent several hours of hard labour was only used on a few occasions when the shelling got too intense.
We were having a good few casualties and there was a steady stream of men from the front line. Just after dawn on the 26th a sniper from somewhere in Jerry’s line had picked off two or three of our chaps and we had a good look for him. Joe Woods spotted him at last in a tree on the Gavrelle-Arras road and four of us got on to him. He was pretty well covered with the leaves and branches but we had the satisfaction of watching his body crash to the ground. Some of us had got home on him. We accounted for a few more too before the morning was very old.
The Bosch was as badly off for communication trenches as we were, and his men had to nip over the ground in full view of us. It was just like shooting rabbits. There was Billy, Jock Baird and myself at the game and if one missed one of the others was sure to hit. We couldn’t help but laugh at the efforts of the Bosch. First he would nip over the back of his trench and start off over the open ground at a trot. A bullet from one of our rifles would make him sprint for dear life; another ten yards and he was down, most probably a dead German. It was coldblooded murder, but still it’s the same for both sides and some of the Germans managed to get back.
We got news along that Company Sergeant Major Milne of C had been killed by a shell during the night. He was digging some of his men out of a fallen house when he got it. Damn it all, there is good in the worst of ’em. There was none of the rejoicing at his death that might have been expected from the old Portsmouth crowd. With them, the men who knew him on the Gloucester Castle and Gallipoli, he was the most hated NCO who had ever been made. I remember the time on Gallipoli, at Backhouse Post, the rejoicing throughout the whole battalion when word flew round that Sergeant Milne was wounded, and the genuine regret when we knew that it was only a very, very slight wound in the neck from a very tired bullet that had travelled at least four miles. Poor old Milne, gone at last, and gone like a soldier.
The Bosch concentrated most of his artillery on the village during the day and the amount of stuff he dropped into it was simply tremendous, nearly all 8-inch shells, and what was once a solid, square-towered church was very soon a heap of powdered stone.
We had to shift our position during the day to a trench no more than knee deep that lay close behind the church and we had a terrible time. We soon got it deep enough to give us head cover and we needed it too. Lumps of 8-inch shell casing kept whizzing down amongst us and several of our company were badly hit. A 5.9 right in the trench where No. 2 Platoon was accounted for seven men, four blown to bits and three terribly wounded.
What with the heavy shelling, poor cover, no sleep and plenty of hard work, nerves began to fray a little at the edges and some of the men began to be a bit jumpy. It’s always a bad sign when men crowd together in a trench and we had all our work cut out to keep them in their places. Several kept on about having no water, Kelly Clayton being one of the most persistent, so I sent half a dozen off under Willet, now lance corporal, to the village where there was a decent well. Jerry had been fairly quiet for half an hour but they had no sooner got to the well than he opened up again with a score of guns right on the village. Lance Corporal Willet, Clayton and another chap came back, the others had been killed outright at the well. Needless to say, no water came back and we had to sit on Kelly to stop him from bolting.
Our aeroplanes had been getting it hot all day and we saw four driven down in flames in less than two hours. They were our artillery spotting planes with open fuselage and petrol tanks in a conspicuous position above the pilot and observer. They were patrolling over the Bosch lines about 800 feet up, not caring a damn about the anti-aircraft shells which were bursting in scores about them, or about the countless rifle and machine-gun bullets that were fired at them from the Bosch lines. All at once a German fighter would drop out of the blue, get behind our man’s tail and let fly with about half a dozen tracer bullets into his petrol tank. Poor devils, they hadn’t a chance, the plane was a mass of flames in less than a minute and in three instances we saw the pilot and observer jump from the plane about 500 feet up. Their fate was obvious. In the fourth case the two men stuck to their machine and managed to get it to within a hundred feet of the ground when it crashed just behind our support lines. The Bosch straightaway sent over a salvo of shrapnel and got a few of our men who had dashed over to help the two airmen. These little incidents got our blood to boiling point and we would cheerfully have dashed over the top for a smack at the Bosch. As we couldn’t do that we took to cursing him and our own fighting planes, not one to be seen anywhere. Then we cursed the men who were responsible for sending out such old-fashioned and out-of-date planes. They should have been scrapped ages ago, or in any case they should have had a few of our fighting planes to protect them.
Just as dusk drew on we observed a German aeroplane flying very low over our front line and the ruins of the village. Of course, we all opened up on him with our rifles but he took no heed and presently he dropped two red lights and a green one. It was obviously a signal for his artillery and we had to crouch down for a full hour. The amount of shells those hellhounds sent over was simply overwhelming and for long into the night we were all more or less dazed.
If we had to take any ground off Jerry with his present strength and attitude we would need far more men than there appeared to be round there, and a lot of luck too. There appeared to be nothing wrong with the German morale; if we could hold on to what we had we would be jolly lucky.
The night was a repetition of the previous night, alarms and excursions on both sides, a terrible ghastly night of sudden spasms when every man stood to and the imagination of one windy individual would set the guns of two corps firing like mad. Dawn came and with it another intense barrage by both sides, but after another hour things quietened down to normal. I think both sides were pretty well exhausted.
About 10.00am on the 27th, after a meeting of our officers with the CO, Wanky Mitchell sent along for platoon sergeants to go to him to get plans of the attack. Jim Hearne went but after about half an hour he was back and the expressions he used about our worthy officer are really not fit to print.
He took the sergeants out over the open into the village and got them all seated in a newly-made 8-inch shell hole. There, instead of telling them about the attack, he started preaching to them, ‘Were they prepared to meet their God?’ It’s much he didn’t meet his there and then, but Mr Hardy kept them quiet and, after about ten minutes, sent them back to their platoons. They left Mitchell in the shell hole, protesting for all he was worth that he wasn’t mad, but Mr Hardy said he was going straight over to the CO to report him.
We knew the attack was to come off about dawn but that was all we did know. Colonel Hutchinson came along and had a talk to Mitchell and took him back to Battalion Headquarters to see Jimmy Ross. They decided to keep him there, which was a big relief to us all.
No doubt we should want every man we could get hold of to carry us through, every tooth and nail, but we certainly didn’t want a blithering lunatic in charge. We pottered about during the day, improving the trench, but what for God only knows; very few of us would ever see it or want it again after that night.
Jerry kept at it all day, pounding the ruins of Gavrelle into the dust, and the only place that had any walls standing at all was the mayor’s house, standing right in the front line.
Our aeroplanes were very conspicuous by their absence and Jerry certainly ruled the roost in that respect. Only twice did our spotting planes try to get over and, in both cases, they were chased to the ground. One was fortunate and dropped to earth behind our own lines; the other was unlucky and came down behind Jerry’s supports. We watched the two airmen scramble out of the plane and nip off for the nearest trench; they had no sooner left the plane than it burst into flames, probably fired by the pilot.
About four o’clock in the afternoon Jim Hearne said he was going to see Mr Hardy. He wanted more details about the stunt, but he never reached Hardy. He was back in about five minutes, his face livid and his right hand shattered by either a rifle bullet or a piece of shell casing. He was in terrible agony and Billy took him back to Jimmy Ross after we had put his first dressing on it. No more fighting for Jim and I was in charge, absolutely in charge, of No. 1 Platoon A Company 2 RM.
When Billy Hurrell got back I went along to inform Hardy of what had happened and on the way back practically the same thing happened to me. A lump of red-hot casing from an 8-inch shell struck me on the back of the left hand and I turned nearly sick with the pain and shock. My hand was badly cut about, but I felt certain that nothing serious had happened to it. I got back to Billy and told him what had happened, then on to Jimmy Ross. I had to wait about half an hour before I could get near him; he was going at it as hard as he could go with casualties. If things carried on in this fashion, no one would be left to attack at dawn.
Jim Hearne was still there and awaiting a favourable opportunity to go back down the line to 1st Field Ambulance. He was in a terrible state of exhaustion and could hardly summon enough interest in things to ask what was wrong with me. When the time came for my turn I felt a lot better and after Jimmy Ross had bandaged it up I felt ready for the line again. I told him so and he said I had better go down to Field Ambulance with the next batch. ‘No thanks, Doctor,’ I said, ‘give me a drink of hot tea and I’ll go back to the company.’ He let me go at that, but I couldn’t help thinking what a damn fool I was. Chance to get away to hospital and wouldn’t take it. Maybe I would have lost the chance by morning.
I wasn’t feeling very happy about things and hadn’t that confident assurance of getting back out of it all. For one thing I’d missed my usual ‘Good luck mate’ and for another thing I didn’t like the way the Germans were taking things, not a bit like a beaten army. To me they seemed as ready to attack as we were and their artillery was every bit as powerful as ours. Then again they certainly had the upper hand in the air.
I expect it was the failure of the French offensive in Champagne and the withdrawal of several divisions of German troops from the Russian Front. Anyhow, whatever it was, Jerry had his tail up.
About half past six we received orders to move forward to a section of trench just behind the firing line. From there we should move forward about midnight to the tape which the Royal Engineers would lay out at dusk. We got in the trench but I never thought anybody would get out of it alive. Billy, three men and I got in a fire-bay, the traverses of which were filled in with very recent shells. After about ten minutes Jerry started lobbing 8-inch shells over. He must have had three guns working on a stretch of trench no more than fifty yards long and he did everything but hit us. We were all simply terrified for half an hour, dashing about from one spot in our little bit of trench to another in a frantic effort to dodge the shells. I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a state of funk before and the five of us were too helpless to curse after about ten minutes of it. By then Jerry had missed us with so many shells that we felt certain that one of the next was almost bound to hit us.
No one, who has not been through a similar experience, can have the faintest conception of what we felt like. And all the time I couldn’t help but think that if only I had taken Jimmy Ross’s advice I should have been well out of it all. All good things come to an end and Jerry piped down a bit and shortly after our heavies retaliated with 6-inch and 9.2s all in the German wire and front line. We were watching them burst and giving forth curses of satisfaction when our people happened to drop one in his trench. One 9.2 dropped short, right in our own front line, and we soon had word up that it had accounted for twenty of our men, mostly killed. We had word along about 11.00pm to stand by to move over to the tape and we moved at midnight.
Just as I put my hands on the parapet of the trench to pull myself up some stumbling nervous fool stepped back with his hobnailed boot right on my gammy hand. My curses brought up Mr Hardy who was checking us over and when he saw the blood dripping from the bandage, insisted on me going back to Jimmy Ross. I said I’d carry on, I could still hold my rifle but he wouldn’t hear of it. ‘My God, Sergeant,’ he said, ‘if I’d half your chance I’d take it and be thankful.’ Bob Bayliss was standing by and whispered fiercely ‘Get back out of it, you bloody fool.’ I’d very little heart left with which to tackle the fight and I was nearly all in with the pain from my hand and with the fatigue and nervous strain of the past few days, but still I didn’t like packing up. However, like a good soldier, I obeyed the last order and got back, and the boys went over to the tape, where they had to lie shivering with cold and fear until zero hour at 4.30am.
After much searching I found the doctor’s dugout, the entrance of which had been filled in two or three times during the evening with the shelling and the surrounding trench battered out of all recognition. He was having a bit of a stand easy, having just got a batch of wounded away to 1st Field Ambulance. He looked to my hand, cleaned it and put on a fresh bandage and then told me I had better wait until the next batch was ready to go down. We had a chat together about Gallipoli days and then he advised me to get a bit of sleep. I found a corner but, although I was nearly dead with fatigue, I couldn’t sleep a wink. My thoughts were with the boys and zero hour.
I was dozing when, at 4.25am, with barely a streak of light in the sky the battle began. With a soul-splitting crash, our barrage opened up and the Bosch straightaway put down a counter barrage and the whole front was a mass of flame, smoke and lumps of flying metal.
The very earth shook and we all expected our dugout to fall in on us, but we daren’t go outside. Shells were falling in scores and, by the sound of things, mostly 5.9s and 8-inch. It would be as well here to give a few details of the attack and the objectives to be carried out. The front stretched from Monchy on the right to Arleux on the left. On the left were the Canadians, then 2nd Division at Oppy, then the RN Division, and on the right XVII Corps.
The objective of 2 RM was the ridge of high ground just on the left of the village, the tit-bit of the whole position being the windmill, nothing like a windmill now but a strong fortified position held in full strength by the Bosch.
First Royal Marines were to attack on the left of our battalion; and their main element was enfiladed from a strongpoint on the single line of railway just beyond the windmill. The windmill was attacked by Lieutenant Newling and a party of men who captured it, killed every Jerry in it, and held it against three or four vigorous counter-attacks. Owing to the attacks on both flanks failing, the main body of our battalion had to fall back and by noon the attack had failed. Only the windmill held out and if ever a man deserved the VC it was Newling.
The Bosch was running reinforcements right up the Douai-Arras road in motor-buses and sending them against the windmill, but Newling and his little band of thirty men never budged an inch. He stood up on top of the trench and flung Mills bombs at them as fast as the men could pass them to him. For that he got the Military Cross and two Honourable Artillery Company officers, Lieutenant Pollard and another, got the Victoria Cross for taking a strongpoint on the railway. Petty Officer Scott and fifteen men of the Ansons on the right were isolated during the night of the 28th/29th and had to fight their way back in the morning, bringing in with them 250 German prisoners. Had he been an Australian it would have meant the Victoria Cross. There is no doubt that when a Naval Division man got the Victoria Cross he more than earned it.
Hardy’s presentiment proved to be only too correct. The poor devil was shot dead somewhere round the windmill and, as far as we knew, his body was never found; the money he had on him too is still going begging.
Sergeant Major Chapman was killed, Bob Bayliss was taken prisoner, or so Billy thought, and that brilliant soldier Hobson walked straight over the top as soon as it was light with his hands above his head. I hope the swine got killed!
Joe Woods, the first man in Sedd-el-Bahr castle was killed. Billy told me that he fought like a tiger. Good old Joe, the finest soldier that ever went over the top and the biggest damned nuisance down the line that ever worried an NCO.
Jimmy Ross sent me down to the Field Ambulance about 9.30 am on the 28th with the first batch of walking wounded, but I may as well finish with the attack before I carry on with my own troubles.
During the whole of the 28th and well into the morning of the 29th the Bosch counter-attacked time after time against the village and all the sick-bay men and even the doctor had to turn to with rifles and fight the Bosch in the village. He got as far back as Battalion HQ and things looked very serious for a long time. It was not until about midnight on the 29th that he was pushed back away from the village and his last line of defence.
Very, very little had been gained, except that our hold on Gavrelle had been strengthened by the taking of the windmill position. And the losses were out of all proportion to the little that had been gained.
Our battalion alone lost in killed ten officers and 200 men and the total in killed, wounded and missing was over 600. The 1st Royals lost their Colonel Cartwright and six other officers killed and over 500 other casualties. The casualties for the division in the fighting from 15 April up to the morning of the 30th, when they turned over to the ill-fated 31st Division were: killed forty officers, and 1,000 men. The total killed, wounded and missing was 170 officers and 3,624 NCOs and men.
On being relieved, the division returned to the comforts and luxury of the battered dugouts and trenches of the Rochincourt area.