1
With the British Armies in the
Field, July 1, 1916
The attack which was
launched to-day against the German lines on a 20-mile front began well.
It is not yet a victory, for victory comes at the end of a battle, and
this is only a beginning. But our troops, fighting with very splendid
valour, have swept across the enemy's front trenches along a great part
of the line of attack, and have captured villages and strongholds which
the Germans have long held against us. They are fighting their way
forward not easily but doggedly. Many hundreds of the enemy are
prisoners in our hands. His dead lie thick in the track of our
regiments.
And so, after the first
day of battle, we may say: It is, on balance, a good day for England and
France. It is a day of promise in this war, in which the blood of brave
men is poured out upon the sodden fields of Europe.
For nearly a week now
we have been bombarding the enemy's lines from the Yser to the Somme.
Those of us who have watched this bombardment knew the meaning of it. We
knew that it was the preparation for this attack. All those raids of the
week which I have recorded from day to day were but leading to a greater
raid when not hundreds of men but hundreds of thousands would leave
their trenches and go forward in a great assault.
We had to keep the
secret, to close our lips tight, to write vague words lest the enemy
should get a hint too soon, and the strain was great upon us and the
suspense an ordeal to the nerves, because as the hours went by they drew
nearer to the time when great masses of our men, those splendid young
men who have gone marching along the roads of France, would be sent into
the open, out of the ditches where they got cover from the German fire.
This secret was
foreshadowed by many signs. Travelling along the roads we saw new guns
arriving--heavy guns and field-guns, week after week. We were building
up a great weight of metal.
Passing them, men
raised their eyebrows and smiled grimly. ... A tide of men flowed in
from the ports of France--new men of new divisions. They passed to some
part of the front, disappeared for a while, were met again in fields and
billets, looking harder, having stories to tell of trench life and
raids.
The Army was growing.
There was a mass of men here in France, and some day they would be
ready, trained enough, hard enough, to strike a big blow.
A week or two ago the
whisper passed, "We're going to attack." But no more than that, except
behind closed doors of the mess-room. Somehow by the look on men's
faces, by their silences and thoughtfulness, one could guess that
something was to happen.
There was a thrill in
the air, a thrill from the pulse of men who know the meaning of attack.
Would it be in June or July? The fields of France were very beautiful
this June. There were roses in the gardens of old French châteaux.
Poppies put a flame of colour in the fields, close up to the trenches,
and there were long stretches of gold across the countryside. A pity
that all this should be spoilt by the pest of war.
So some of us thought,
but not many soldiers. After the misery of a wet winter and the
expectations of the spring they were keen to get out of the trenches
again. All their training led up to that. The spirit of the men was for
an assault across the open, and they were confident in the new power of
our guns.
The guns spoke one
morning last week with a louder voice than has yet been heard upon the
front, and as they crashed out we knew that it was the signal for the
new attack. Their fire increased in intensity, covering raids at many
points of the line, until at last all things were ready for the biggest
raid.
2
The scene of the
battlefields at night was of terrible beauty. I motored out to it from a
town behind the lines, where through their darkened windows French
citizens watched the illumination of the sky, throbbing and flashing to
distant shell-fire. Behind the lines the villages were asleep, without
the twinkle of a lamp in any window. The shadow forms of sentries paced
up and down outside the stone archways of old French houses.
Here and there on the
roads a lantern waved to and fro, and its rays gleamed upon the long
bayonet and steel casque of a French Territorial, and upon the bronzed
face of an English soldier, who came forward to stare closely at a piece
of paper which allowed a man to go into the fires of hell up there. It
was an English voice that gave the first challenge, and then called out
"Good night" with a strange and unofficial friendliness as a greeting to
men who were going towards the guns.
The fields on the edge
of the battle of guns were very peaceful. A faint breeze stirred the
tall wheat, above which there floated a milky light transfusing the
darkness. The poppy-fields still glowed redly, and there was a glint of
gold from long stretches of mustard flower. Beyond, the woods stood
black against the sky above little hollows where British soldiers were
encamped.
There by the light of
candles which gave a rose-colour to the painted canvas, boys were
writing letters home before lying down to sleep. Some horsemen were
moving down a valley road. Farther oft a long column of black lorries
passed. It was the food of the guns going forward.
A mile or two more, a
challenge or two more, and then a halt by the roadside. It was a road
which led straight into the central fires of one great battlefield in a
battle-line of 80 miles or more. A small corner of the front, yet in
itself a broad and far-stretching panorama of our gunfire on this night
of bombardment.
I stood with a few
officers in the centre of a crescent sweeping round from Auchonvillers,
Thiépval, La Boisselle, and Fricourt to Bray, on the Somme, at the
southern end of the curve. Here in this beetroot- field on high ground,
we stood watching one of the greatest artillery battles in which British
gunners have been engaged. Up to that night the greatest.
The night sky, very
calm and moist, with low-lying clouds not stirred by wind, was rent with
incessant flashes of light as shells of every calibre burst and
scattered. Out of the black ridges and woods in front of us came
explosions of white fire, as though the earth had opened and let loose
its inner heat. They came up with a burst of intense brilliance, which
spread along a hundred yards of ground and then vanished abruptly behind
the black curtain of the night. It was the work of high explosives and
heavy trench mortars falling in the German lines. Over Thiépval and La
Boisselle there were rapid flashes of bursting shrapnel shells, and
these points of flame stabbed the sky along the whole battle-front.
From the German lines
rockets were rising continually. They rose high and their star-shells
remained suspended for half a minute with an intense brightness. While
the light lasted it cut out the black outline of the trees and broken
roofs, and revealed heavy white smoke- clouds rolling over the enemy's
positions.
They were mostly white
lights, but at one place red rockets went up. They were signals of
distress, perhaps, from German infantry calling to their guns. It was in
the zone of these red signals, over towards Ovillers, that our fire for
a time was most fierce, so that sheets of flame waved to and fro as
though fanned by a furious wind. All the time along the German line red
lights ran up and down like little red dancing devils.
I cannot tell what they
were, unless they were some other kind of signalling, or the bursting of
rifle-grenades. Sometimes for thirty seconds or so the firing ceased,
and darkness, very black and velvety, blotted out everything and
restored the world to peace. Then suddenly, at one point or another, the
earth seemed to open to furnace fires. Down by Bray, southwards, there
was one of these violent shocks of light, and then a moment later
another by Auchonvillers to the north.
And once again the
infernal fires began, flashing, flickering, running along a ridge with a
swift tongue of flame, tossing burning feathers above rosy smoke-clouds,
concentrating into one bonfire of bursting shells over Fricourt and
Thiépval, upon which our batteries always concentrated.
3
There was one curious
phenomenon. It was the silence of all the artillery. By some atmospheric
condition of moisture or wind (though the night was calm), or by the
configuration of the ground, which made pockets into which the sound
fell, there was no great uproar, such as I have heard scores of times in
smaller bombardments than this.
It was all muffled.
Even our own batteries did not crash out with any startling thunder,
though I could hear the rush of big shells, like great birds in flight.
Now and then there was a series of loud strokes, an urgent knocking at
the doors of night. And now and again there was a dull, heavy
thunder-clap, followed by a long rumble, which made me think that mines
were being blown farther up the line.
But for the most part
it was curiously quiet and low-toned, and somehow this muffled artillery
gave one a greater sense ef awfulness and of deadly work.
Along all this stretch
of the battle-front there was no sign of men. It was all inhuman, the
work of impersonal powers, and man himself was in hiding from these
great forces of destruction. So I thought, peering through the darkness,
over the beetroots and the wheat.
But a little later I
heard the steady tramp of many feet and the thud of horses' hoofs
walking slowly, and the grinding of wheels in the ruts. Shadow forms
came up out of the dark tunnel below the trees, the black figures of
mounted officers, followed by a battalion marching with their transport.
I could not see the faces of the men, but by the shape of their forms
could see that they wore their steel helmets and their fighting kit.
They were heavily laden with their packs, but they were marching at a
smart, swinging pace, and as they came along were singing cheerily.
They were singing some
music-hall tune, with a lilt in it, as they marched towards the lights
of all the shells up there in the places of death. Some of them were
blowing mouth-organs and others were whistling. I watched them pass--all
these tall boys of a North Country regiment, and something of their
spirit seemed to come out of the dark mass of their moving bodies and
thrill the air. They were going up to those places without faltering,
without a backward look and singing--dear, splendid men.
I saw other men on the
march, and some of them were whistling the "Marseillaise," though they
were English soldiers. Others were gossiping quietly as they walked, and
once the light of bursting shells played all down the line of their
faces--hard, clean-shaven, bronzed English faces, with the eyes of youth
there staring up at the battle- fires and unafraid.
A young officer walking
at the head of his platoon called out a cheery good night to me. It was
a greeting in the darkness from one of those gallant boys who lead their
men out of the trenches without much thought of self in that moment of
sacrifice.
In the camps the lights
were out and the tents were dark. The soldiers who had been writing
letters home had sent their love and gone to sleep. But the shell-fire
never ceased all night.
4
A Staff officer had
whispered a secret to us at midnight in a little room, when the door was
shut and the window closed. Even then they were words which could be
only whispered, and to men of trust.
"The attack will be
made this morning at 7.30."
So all had gone well,
and there was to be no hitch. The preliminary bombardments had done
their work with the enemy's wire and earthworks. All the organization
for attack had been done, and the men were ready in their assembly
trenches waiting for the words which would hold all their fate.
There was a silence in
the room where a dozen officers heard the words--men who were to be
lookers-on and who would not have to leave a trench up there on the
battlefields when the little hand of a wrist-watch said " It is now."
The great and solemn
meaning of next day's dawn made the air seem oppressive, and our hearts
beat jumpily for just a moment. There would be no sleep for all those
men crowded in the narrow trenches on the north of the Somme. God give
them courage in the morning. . . .
The dawn came with a
great beauty. There was a pale blue sky flecked with white wisps of
cloud. But it was cold and over all the fields there was a floating mist
which rose up from the moist earth and lay heavily upon the ridges, so
that the horizon was obscured. As soon as light came there was activity
in the place where I was behind the lines. A body of French engineers
all blue from casque to puttees, and laden with their field packs,
marched along with a steady tramp, their grave, grim faces turned
towards the front. British Staff officers came motoring swiftly by and
dispatch-riders mounted their motor- cycles and scurried away through
the market carts of French peasants to the open roads. French sentries
and French soldiers in reserve raised their hand to the salute as our
officers passed.
Each man among them
guessed that it was England's day, and that the British Army was out for
attack. It was the spirit of France saluting their comrades in arms when
the oldest "poilu" there raised a wrinkled hand to his helmet and said
to an English soldier, "Bonne chance, mon camarade!”
Along the roads towards
the battlefields there was no movement of troops. For a few miles there
were quiet fields, where cattle grazed and where the wheat grew green
and tall in the white mist. The larks were singing high in the first
glinting sunshine of the day above the haze. And another kind of bird
came soaring overhead.
It was one of our
monoplanes, which flew steadily towards the lines, a herald of the
battle. In distant hollows there were masses of limber, and artillery
horses hobbled in lines.
The battle-line came
into view, the long sweep of country stretching southwards to the Somme.
Above the lines beyond Bray, looking towards the German trenches, was a
great cluster of kite balloons. They were poised very high, held steady
by the air-pockets on their ropes, and their baskets, where the
artillery observers sat, caught the rays of the sun. I counted seventeen
of them, the largest group that has ever been seen along our front; but
I could see no enemy balloons opposite them. It seemed that we had more
eyes than they, but to-day theirs have been staring out of the veil of
the mist.
5
We went farther forward
to the guns, and stood on the same high field where we had watched the
night bombardment. The panorama of battle was spread around us, and the
noise of battle swept about us in great tornadoes. I have said that in
the night one was startled by the curious quietude of the guns, by that
queer muffled effect of so great an artillery. But now on the morning
battle this phenomenon, which I do not understand, no longer existed.
There was one continual roar of guns, which beat the air with great
waves and shocks of sound, prodigious and overwhelming.
The full power of our
artillery was let loose at about 6 o'clock this morning. Nothing like it
has even been seen or heard upon our front before, and all the
preliminary bombardment, great as it was, seemed insignificant to this.
I do not know how many batteries we have along this battle-line or upon
the section of the line which I could see, but the guns seemed crowded
in vast numbers of every calibre, and the concentration of their fire
was terrific in its intensity.
For a time I could see
nothing through the low-lying mist and heavy smoke-clouds which mingled
with the mist, and stood like a blind man, only listening. It was a
wonderful thing which came to my ears. Shells were rushing through the
air as though all the trains in the world had leapt their rails and were
driving at express speed through endless tunnels in which they met each
other with frightful collisions.
Some of these shells,
firing from batteries not far from where I stood, ripped the sky with a
high tearing note. Other shells whistled with that strange, gobbling,
sibilant cry which makes one's bowels turn cold. Through the mist and
the smoke there came sharp, loud, insistent knocks, as separate
batteries fired salvos, and great clangorous strokes, as of iron doors
banged suddenly, and the tattoo of the light field-guns playing the
drums of death.
The mist was shifting
and dissolving. The tall tower of Albert Cathedral appeared suddenly
through the veil, and the sun shone full for a few seconds on the golden
Virgin and the Babe, which she held head downwards above all this tumult
as a peace-offering to men. The broken roofs of the town gleamed white,
and the two tall chimneys to the left stood black and sharp against the
pale blue of the sky, into which dirty smoke drifted above the whiter
clouds.
I could see now as well
as hear. I could see our shells falling upon the German lines by
Thiépval and La Boisselle and farther by Mametz, and southwards over
Fricourt. High explosives were tossing up great vomits of black smoke
and earth all along the ridges. Shrapnel was pouring upon these places,
and leaving curly white clouds, which clung to the ground.
Below there was the
flash of many batteries like Morse code signals by stabs of flame. The
enemy was being blasted by a hurricane of fire. I found it in my heart
to pity the poor devils who were there, and yet was filled by a strange
and awful exultation because this was the work of our guns, and because
it was England's day.
Over my head came a
flight of six aeroplanes, led by a single monoplane, which steered
steadily towards the enemy. The sky was deeply blue above them, and when
the sun caught their wings they were as beautiful and delicate as
butterflies. But they were carrying death with them, and were out to
bomb the enemy's batteries and to drop their explosives into masses of
men behind the German lines.
Farther away a German
plane was up. Our anti-aircraft guns were searching for him with their
shells, which dotted the sky with snowballs.
Every five minutes or
so a single gun fired a round. It spoke with a voice I knew, the deep,
gruff voice of old "Grandmother," one of our 15-inch guns, which carries
a shell large enough to smash a cathedral with one enormous burst. I
could follow the journey of the shell by listening to its rush through
space. Seconds later there was the distant thud of its explosion.
Troops were moving
forward to the attack from behind the lines. It was nearly 7.30. All the
officers about me kept glancing at their wrist- watches. We did not
speak much then, but stared silently at the smoke and mist which floated
and banked along our lines. There, hidden, were our men. They, too,
would be looking at their wrist- watches.
The minutes were
passing very quickly--as quickly as men's lives pass when they look back
upon the years. An officer near me turned away, and there was a look of
sharp pain in his eyes. We were only lookers-on. The other men, our
friends, the splendid Youth that we have passed on the roads of France,
were about to do this job. Good luck go with them! Men muttering such
wishes in their hearts.
6
It was 7.30. Our
watches told us that, but nothing else. The guns had lifted and were
firing behind the enemy's first lines, but there was no sudden hush for
the moment of attack. The barrage by our guns seemed as great as the
first bombardment. For ten minutes or so before this time a new sound
had come into the general thunder of artillery. It was like the "rafale"
of the French soixante-quinze, very rapid, with distant and separate
strokes, but louder than the noise of field-guns. They were our
trench-mortars at work along the whole length of the line before me.
It was 7.30. The moment
for the attack had come. Clouds of smoke had been liberated to form a
screen for the infantry, and hid the whole line. The only men I could
see were those in reserve, winding along a road by some trees which led
up to the attacking points. They had their backs turned as they marched
very slowly and steadily forward. I could not tell who they were, though
I had passed some of them on the road a day or two before. But, whoever
they were, English, Irish, or Welsh, I watched them until most had
disappeared from sight behind a clump of trees. In a little while they
would be fighting, and would need all their courage.
At a minute after 7.30
there came through the rolling smoke-clouds a rushing sound. It was the
noise of rifle-fire and machine-guns. The men were out of their trenches
and the attack had begun. The enemy was barraging our lines.
7
The country chosen for
our main attack to-day stretches from the Somme for some 20 miles
northwards. The French were to operate on our immediate right. It is
very different country from Flanders, with its swamps and flats, and
from the Loos battlefields, with their dreary plain pimpled by
slack-heaps.
It is a sweet and
pleasant country, with wooded hills and little valleys along the
river-beds of the Ancre and the Somme, and fertile meadow-lands and
stretches of woodland, where soldiers and guns may get good cover. "A
clean country," said one of our Generals when he first went to it from
the northern war zone.
It seemed very queer to
go there first, after a knowledge of in the Ypres salient, where there
is seldom view of the enemy's lines from any rising ground--except
Kemmel Hill and Observatory Ridge--and where certainly one cannot walk
on the skyline in full view of German earthworks 2000 yards away.
But at Hebuterne, which
the French captured after desperate fighting, and at Auchonvillers
(opposite Beaumont), and on the high ground by the ruined city of
Albert, looking over to Fricourt and Mametz, and farther south on the
Somme, looking towards the little German stronghold at Curlu, beyond the
marshes, one could see very clearly and with a strange, unreal sense of
safety.
I saw a German sentry
pacing the village street of Curlu, and went within 20 paces of his
outposts. Occasionally one could stare through one's glasses at German
working parties just beyond sniping range round Beaumont and Fricourt,
and to the left of Fricourt the Crucifix between its seven trees seemed
very near as one looked at it in the German lines.
Below this Calvary was
the Tambour and the Bois Français, where not a week passed without a
mine being blown on one side or the other, so that the ground was a
great upheaval of mingling mine- craters and tumbled earth, which but
half covered the dead bodies of men.
It was difficult ground
in front of us. The enemy was strong in his defences. In the clumps of
woodland beside the ruined villages he hid many machine-guns and
trench-mortars, and each ruined house in each village was part of a
fortified stronghold difficult to capture by direct assault. It was
here, however, and with good hopes of success that our men attacked
to-day, working eastwards across the Ancre and northwards up from the
Somme.
8
At the end of this
day's fighting it is still too soon to give a clear narrative of the
battle. Behind the veil of smoke which hides our men there were many
different actions taking place, and the messages that come back at the
peril of men's lives and by the great gallantry of our signallers and
runners give but glimpses of the progress of our men and of their hard
fighting.
I have seen the wounded
who have come out of the battle, and the prisoners brought down in
batches, but even they can give only confused accounts of fighting in
some single sector of the line which comes within their own experience.
At first, it is
certain, there was not much difficulty in taking the enemy's first line
trenches along the greater part of the country attacked. Our bombardment
had done great damage, and had smashed down the enemy's wire and
flattened his parapets. When our men left their assembly trenches and
swept forward, cheering, they encountered no great resistance from
German soldiers, who had been in hiding in their dug-outs under our
storm of shells.
Many of these dug-outs
were blown in and filled with dead, but out of others which had not been
flung to pieces by high explosives crept dazed and deafened men who held
their hands up and bowed their heads. Some of them in one part of the
line came out of their shelters as soon as our guns lifted, and met our
soldiers half-way with signs of surrender.
They were collected and
sent back under guard, while the attacking columns passed on to the
second and third lines in the network of trenches, and then if they
could get through them to the fortified ruins behind.
But the fortunes of war
vary in different places, as I know from the advance of troops,
including the South Staffords, the Manchesters, and the Gordons. In
crossing the first line of trench the South Staffordshire men had a
comparatively easy time, with hardly any casualties, gathering up
Germans who surrendered easily. The enemy's artillery fire did not touch
them seriously, and both they and the Manchesters had very great luck.
But the Gordons fared
differently. These keen fighting men rushed forward with great
enthusiasm until they reached one end of the village of Mametz, and then
quite suddenly they were faced by rapid machine-gun fire and a storm of
bombs. The Germans held a trench called Danzig Avenue on the ridge where
Mametz stands, and defended it with desperate courage. The Gordons flung
themselves upon this position, and had some difficulty in clearing it of
the enemy. At the end of the day Mametz remained in our hands.
It was these fortified
villages which gave our men greatest trouble, for the German troops
defended them with real courage, and worked their machine-guns from
hidden emplacements with skill and determination.
Fricourt is, I believe,
still holding out (its capture has since been officially reported),
though our men have forced their way on both sides of it, so that it is
partly surrounded. Montauban, to the north- east of Mametz, was captured
early in the day, and we also gained the strong point at Serre, until
the Germans made a somewhat heavy counter-attack, and succeeded in
driving out our troops.
Beaumont-Hamel was not
in our hands at the end of the day, but here again our men are fighting
on both sides of it. The woods and village of Thiépval, which I had
watched under terrific shell-fire in our preliminary bombardments, was
one point of our first attack, and our troops swept from one end of the
village to the other, and out beyond to a new objective.
They were too quick to
get on, it seems, for a considerable number of Germans remained in the
dug-outs, and when the British soldiers went past them they came out of
their hiding-places and became a fighting force again. Farther north our
infantry attacked both sides of the Gommecourt salient with the greatest
possible valour.
That is my latest
knowledge, writing at midnight on the first day of July, which leaves
our men beyond the German front lines in many places, and penetrating to
the country behind like arrow-heads between the enemy's strongholds.
9
In the afternoon I saw
the first batchs of prisoners brought in. In parties of 50 to 100 they
came down, guarded by men of the Border Regiment, through the little
French hamlets close behind the fighting- lines, where peasants stood in
their doorways watching these first fruits of victory.
They were damaged
fruit, some of these poor wretches, wounded and nerve-shaken in the
great bombardment. Most of them belonged to the 109th and 110th
Regiments of the 14th Reserve Corps, and they seemed to be a mixed lot
of Prussians and Bavarians. On the whole, they were tall, strong
fellows, and there were striking faces among them, of men higher than
the peasant type, and thoughtful. But they were very haggard and worn
and dirty.
Over the barbed wire
which had been stretched across a farmyard, in the shadow of an old
French church, I spoke to some of them. To one man especially, who
answered all my questions with a kind of patient sadness. He told me
that most of his comrades and himself had been without food and water
for several days, as our intense fire made it impossible to get supplies
up the communication-trenches.
About the bombardment
he raised his hands and eyes a moment-- eyes full of a remembered
horror--and said, "Es war schrecklich" (It was horrible). Most of the
officers had remained in the second line, but the others had been
killed, he thought. His own brother had been killed, and in Baden his
mother and sisters would weep when they heard. But he was glad to be a
prisoner, out of the war at last, which would last much longer.
A new column of
prisoners was being brought down, and I suddenly the man turned and
uttered an exclamation with a look of surprise and awe.
"Ach, da ist ein
Hauptmann!” He recognized an officer among these new prisoners, and it
seemed clearly a surprising thing to him that one of the great caste
should be in this plight, should suffer as he had suffered.
Some of his
fellow-prisoners lay on the ground all bloody and bandaged. One of them
seemed about to die. But the English soldiers gave them water, and one
of our officers emptied his cigarette-case and gave them all he had to
smoke.
Other men were coming
back from the fields of fire, glad also to be back behind the line. They
were our wounded, who came in very quickly after the first attack to the
casualty clearing stations close to the lines, but beyond the reach of
shell-fire. Many of them were lightly wounded in the hands and feet, and
sometimes 50 or more were on one lorry, which had taken up ammunition
and was now bringing back the casualties.
They were wonderful
men. So wonderful in their gaiety and courage that one's heart melted at
the sight of them. They were all grinning as though they had come from a
"jolly" in which they had been bumped a little. There was a look of
pride in their eyes as they came driving down like wounded knights from
a tourney.
They had gone through
the job with honour, and have come out with their lives, and the world
was good and beautiful again, in this warm sun, in these snug French
villages, where peasant men and women waved hands to them, and in these
fields of scarlet and gold and green.
The men who were going
up to the battle grinned back at those who were coming out. One could
not see the faces of the lying-down cases, only the soles of their boots
as they passed; but the laughing men on the lorries--some of them
stripped to the waist and bandaged roughly--seemed to rob war of some of
its horror, and the spirit of our British soldiers shows bright along
the roads of France, so that the very sun seems to get some of its gold
from these men's hearts.
To-night the guns are
at work again, and the sky flushes as the shells burst over there where
our men are fighting.
